November 2011 Volunteer Newsletter

ECO Volunteer Newsletter Issue No. 6 November 2011 Volunteer Hours:  Saturday 9:00 am – 1:00 pm December 1, 2011 – Winter CSA begins   Greetings!

Hello again. The season of giving is upon us. I hope you had an opportunity to stop by the farm for our Harvest Festival on October 21. If you missed it, you will notice several new additions to our farm during your next visit. Besides the new mural, the hoophouses are almost ready for the winter season. Adam Schwartz has worked hard to repair the existing structures and put in some additional features. He had some quality help from our staff and some of the volunteers.

Two other things you will see are the fruit trees and the new farm residents. On October 22, two groups of University of Maryland students helped plant fruit trees along the driveway. There are apple, pear, Asian pear, and peach trees. Also, a really cool miniature aquaponics system was installed in the nursery. This system, which is a pilot operation, has 29 organically raised bluegill fishes. Make sure you check out the tree and the bluegills.

Finally, starting with this issue, we will begin a volunteer recognition segment that will focus on sharing the contributions our volunteer core has made towards helping ECO City achieve its mission. Hopefully, we will be able to share your contribution and story soon.

If you have been away from the farm, please come back and see all the new things we have on the farm. As usual we need your help to make this happen. Hopefully we will see you this month as we prepare for the holiday festivities.

John Costa

Volunteer Coordinator

I happily joined the staff of ECO City Farms just over two months ago.  My working relationship with ECO is not typical; I am a member of the Chesapeake Conservation Corps (CCC), a group of twenty-one members funded by the Chesapeake Bay Trust (CBT), placed in organizations across Maryland and empowered to promote awareness of and participation in the conservation of the Chesapeake Bay. The CCC’s philosophy is that the conservation of the Chesapeake can only be successful if we apply a holistic approach to conservation.  Engaging new agricultural practices is one aspect of this approach, and is what ultimately brings me to ECO.

 

My day on the farm generally begins at 8 AM as I take out the compost notebook and a thermometer that is about as long as my leg.  My role on the farm up to this point has been as a Compost Apprentice to Benny Erez and a general extra hand.  I have taken part in almost every aspect of running the farm, from harvest to grant writing and high tunnel construction, though my main priority has been on composting.  It has been a real pleasure working with Benny, even though I sometimes end up going home smelling like a barrel of pickled brewer’s grain and fruit.

 

ECO City Farm is excited to be opening another farm location within the Autumn Woods Housing Complex.  I am helping to develop the site designs, I will help construct the composting facility, and I will also be running a pilot compost collection network within the Autumn Woods housing complex.  Our goal is to engage the entire community in composting, and later in the operation of the farm.  I have an additional goal as part of my CCC duties, to create a local network of grade schools and middle schools, all of which will compost cafeteria waste and have compost clubs.  I am looking forward to transitioning into these projects.

 

What do urban farms and composting have to do with Chesapeake Bay Conservation?  The focus of ECO has been on providing healthy foods to low-income communities.  Urban farms and gardens put to use otherwise vacant and ecologically dead areas. By putting these plots of land to productive use, we reduce transportation costs associated with foods; more to the point, we shift the burden of production from large conventional farms, where runoff and nutrient control can be quite difficult, to small urban lots that are more easily managed and that are often more productive.  It is my personal hope, and that of ECO, that people start to plant edible gardens, which will have the effect of making land more productive, and reducing reliance on “conventional” large scale agriculture.

 

Supporting ECO City Farm is not a typical approach to Bay conservation.  The conventional approach to protecting the Bay has focused on Bay ecosystem restoration, along with management practices designed to reduce nutrient loading in the watershed.  This is all well and good, but the problem remains that there are millions of people in the watershed.  All of these people must live conscientiously for these methods to be effective.  Conventional approaches to conservation focus on finding ways to mitigate our effects while we continue living the way we currently are.  Instead, ECO City Farms puts forward a new vision of sustainable communities where food is easily accessible without cars, where we take care of the soil, and in turn allow it to take care of us.  This approach is less direct, but offers a real chance of long-term success because it is a vision of a viable lifestyle that does not sacrifice standard of living.  My job is to marry the vision of sustainable development at ECO with conservation of the Chesapeake Bay in an explicit and direct manner, and promote this synergy through educational avenues.  I look forward with anticipation to the upcoming year.

– Dietrich J. Epp Schmidt

   CCC Volunteer & ECO City Farm Intern 

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