Michael Pollan Article

Michael Pollan examines the rise of MRSA (antibiotic resistant staph infections) and bee colony collapse disorder as two indications that our food system is inherently unsustainable.

Interesting facts/quotes from the article. . .
(1) 70% of all antibiotics used in the US are fed to animals on factory farms;
(2) More people die of MRSA infections (19,000 in 2005) in the US than die of AIDs;
(3) "Recent studies in Europe and Canada found that confinement pig operations have become reservoirs of MRSA. A European study found that 60 percent of pig farms that routinely used antibiotics had MRSA-positive pigs (compared with 5 percent of farms that did not feed pigs antibiotics)."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-lede-t.html?ex=1198472400&en=a942aa8a9e5a30be&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Study: Healthy Food Costs More and Is More Prone to Inflation

Yet another reason to set ourselves up so we can grow our own here in West Contra Costa County. . .

A study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association averaged the cost per calorie of more than 370 food items from the shelves of a Seattle supermarket. The authors determined that you can get your entire caloric intake for a day (2,000 calories) for just $3.52 if you choose unhealthy foods, while it will cost you $36.32 to eat only healthy foods. What is more, the cost of healthy foods increased 19.5% in just two years, while the cost of unhealthy foods dropped by 1.8% during this same time period. Learn more at the link below.

http://www.rwjf.org/programareas/features/digest.jsp?c=EMC-ND138&pid=1138&id=6878

Thoughts. . .
(1) Looking at numbers like this, it is no surprise that low-income communities have much higher rates of obesity and diabetes. It costs so much more to eat a healthy diet.

(2) The federal government invests billions of dollars annually supporting a food system which favors unhealthy food products. It is not surprising that unhealthy products are so much cheaper. (Recently, the Democrats are just as responsible for this state of affairs as are the Republicans).

(3) As the price of oil continues to rise, the cost of fresh produce can only rise with it. Transporting and warehousing fresh produce requires a huge investment of fossil fuels in our current food and fuel system. Even thought lots of attention has been paid recently to diet and the need to increase access to fresh produce, I think our food system is only becoming more unhealthy because it is so depedent on long-distance transportation and the price of oil. As the cost of oil rises, healthy food will only get more and more expensive if we continue to import all of it from outside our community. Growing a significant amount of healthy food right here in our own community has the potential to both improve the quality of our food supply AND insulate us as a community against some of the effects of inflation and oil price increases. Oil supplies are only dimishing and worldwide oil demand is only increasing. NOW is the time to develop our community's ability to grow some of our own food if we hope to retain some control over the quality and cost of our future food supply.

Foodshed Development Update 11.13.07

This is to update you on just some of the foodshed development happening in West Contra Costa County recently...

Berryland on the Richmond Greenway:
On Saturday, November 10th the 5% Local Coalition sponsored a workday at Berryland on the Richmond Greenway.

10 adult volunteers and 4 youngsters helped build, fill, and plant 4 more log planters. We moved approximately 3 yards of soil and compost and planted 30+ raspberry cuttings and 3 blueberry bushes. We also mulched new path areas and beds. Berryland is definitely starting to take shape; if we keep up the pace, there will plenty of delicious berries by next summer. Each raspberry bush should eventually 1 pound of berries per year. Blueberry bushes can live 75 years, producing hundreds of pounds of berries over their lifetimes.

Kudos to volunteers Stace, Colin (representing the Kensington Cub Scouts), and Everett, Bill, Nancy, Doria, Barry, Sharif, Jeff, Marilyn, Brian, Inoue(sp?), and Kai. The Friends of the Richmond Greenway also stopped by at the end of their Saturday Stroll.

Also, thanks to:
-Brian Kelley of East Bay Biofuels for encouragement and letting us use your restroom!
-Timothy Manhart of Catahoula Coffee company (artisinal coffee roasted right here in Richmond) for donating the delicious coffee (unsolicited even) and for on-going donations of spent coffee grounds for soil amendments.
-Tom and Shirley Butt for donating 30+ raspberry cuttings
-Paula Kristovich for donating 6 bags of compost
-Greg Hardesty,Tony Norris, and the rest of the Parks and Landscaping Division for wood chips, soil, logs, and general support and encouragement.
-Nancy Baer of Contra Costa County Health and Cheryl Maier of Opportunity West for donating snacks.
-Cassie Scott and Verde Partnership Garden for general support, encouragement, raspberry starts, and use of tools.
-Jayma Brown of the Richmond Garden Club for donating 3 blueberry bushes.
-The Friends of the Richmond Greenway for general support and encouragement.

Next Workday/Donations:
Foodshed Development Days at Berryland are the 2nd Saturday of each month. The next one will be December 8th from 9:30 to 12:00. We can always use cash donations (tax deductible), berry bushes and compost. We are also looking for a person or group to develop interpretive/educational signs for the various bushes. Contact Park Guthrie at (510) 691-5051 or park@urbantilth.org for more information.

Richmond High School Garden Workday
Not to be outdone, the Richmond High School YME Club sponsored a garden workday at Richmond High School on Saturday, November 10th from 9:00 all the way to 4:00. YME club president Alex Chavez, the YME Garden Committee (Erica Gonzalez, Aricelie Vasquez, Adriana Cerrano) and teacher Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl organized the effort. Approximately 25-30 students turned out for the event.

This is their 3rd garden workday of the year. They have been reviving the neglected garden, greenhouse, and creek model behind the portables near the playing field. They aim to create a place of natural beauty for the Richmond high students and to learn how to grow healthy, organic food for their community. Since the beginning of the year, they have built, filled, and planted several new raised vegetable beds, repaired and planted decrepit beds, cleared weeds, planted cover crops, installed irrigation, rebuilt a garden shed, and overhauled the pumps on the creek model. Rumor has it that they may soon add tilapia to the West County foodshed by stocking the creek model.

Donations Needed: They are always seeking donations of lumber/wine barrel planters, soil, seeds, seedlings, saplings, berry bushes, and organic soil amendments.

Their next workday will be Saturday, December 1st. The community is welcome to come by and check out the progress.


Verde Garden Market

The Verde Garden Market, launched by the Verde Partnership Garden last spring, continues to be one of the only sources of quality, organic produce in North Richmond with bargain basement prices to boot. On Thursday, November 8th, the 15 Verde Elementary student garden leaders and garden educators Bievenida Meza and Cassie Scott harvested and sold more than 25 pounds of fava beans, tomatoes, collards, green onions, basil, rosemary, and winter squash at the after school market on Verde Elementary campus. The Verde Garden Market is one of only a handful of school garden programs nationwide which impact local food systems by marketing produce grown by students on a school campus. Since April, the Verde Market has harvested and distributed more than 500 pounds of organic vegetables, as well as 90 bundles of herbs, greens, and flowers (Verde Garden Market Database 6.07 to 9.07) . Iyalode Kinney and the Transition Program students (Saechao, Jonathon, and others) as well as Park, Marilyn, Deborah, and Mary Lynn also regularly contribute to the Verde Garden Market Program.

The Lincoln Farm

The Lincoln Farm is a project co-sponsored by Urban Tilth and Lincoln Elementary School with support from Bright Futures afterschool program and the City of Richmond, Parks and Landscaping Division. The Lincoln Farm is located on the Richmond Greenway immediately adjacent to Lincoln Elementary School and just west of Berryland. 17 Lincoln student farmers (3rd graders in the afterschool program) led by Park Guthrie are developing and tending raised garden beds along the Richmond Greenway. So far, they have built 13 raised beds; 9 are filled and recently planted with fava beans, snap peas, mustard greens, garlic, radish, and cilantro. Eventually, we hope to develop 3 raised beds for each student farmer so they can grow enough to take home fresh, organic produce on a weekly basis. You can see the Lincoln student farmers in action on Monday and Wednesday afternoons from 3:00 to 5:00 on the Greenway. A big thank-you to Will Plutte, Program Coordinator and Vivian Tran, Afterschool Coordinator at Lincoln Elementary for helping make this project happen. Also, thanks to Greg Hardesty and Tony Norris for on-going support, irrigation troubleshooting, wood chips, soil, and logs.

Today, we, in West Contra Costa County, like virtually all Americans subsist on food provided by a highly industrialized food supply. In terms of our food supply, we are the most dependent people in the history of humanity. Certainly, reliable, abundant supplies of relatively cheap food products are one outcome of our dependence on this industrialized food system. The amazing efficiencies of the industrialized food system also allow us to commit less time and energy, as individuals and as communities, tending to our food needs and to food production than ever before in human history. Other clear by-products of our reliance on an industrialized food system include:
•degradation of our farmlands and natural ecosystems;
•significant contributions to greenhouse gasses;
•the obesity and diabetes epidemic;
•increasing political power of multinational agribusiness corporations;
•the need to maintain power and influence in oil rich regions across the globe (we no longer have the ability to feed ourselves as a nation without a steady supply of oil and natural gas);
•a deepening divide between our culture and our food, land, and nature;

We do not have to be so reliant on this industrialized food system. The foodshed development activities over the past week are important on a number of levels. The bushes we planted and seeds we have sown will contribute hundreds of pounds of fresh, healthy food to our community. But perhaps more important than the yields, are the new community norms and local knowledge we are developing. Seventy-five more West Contra Costans know something more about food production than they did last week. Dozens of Richmond Greenway users now have an idea that public lands can, and perhaps should, be used for production of healthy foods. Dozens of Verde and Lincoln elementary students and their families now consider schools as one place to produce or purchase healthy foods. Dozens of Richmond High school students are now in the practice of committing free time to work together to create a source of healthy food for their communities. The knowledge and practice of food production is slowly working it’s way back into our local culture.

We have a long way to go to establish even a small measure of food self-reliance in West Contra Costa County. Even achieving just 1% food independence will require not only individuals, but also our basic community institutions such as schools, churches, hospitals, and city governments to recognize the power they have to become active producers in a local food system. We have a tremendous amount of work to do. But, blessed with a perfect climate, relatively large amounts of open space, and strong agrarian/gardening traditions in our people, West Contra Costa County can become one of the first communities in the nation to regain some measure of food self-sufficiency. We can become a community where all children have access to abundant supplies of fresh, chemical-free produce. We can become a community where our bonds to one another and to nature are strengthened by the food we produce and eat. We can create a more sustainable, healthy, and just community by working together to develop the West Contra Costa County foodshed.

If you would like to get involved in this effort, please join the 5% Local Coalition by registering at the Yahoo group at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/5percentlocal/ or by contacting Park Guthrie at park@urbantilth.org or (510) 691-5051. If you are already developing the foodshed in West Contra Costa County, please send me an email update. I’ll include your activities in the next Foodshed Development update which I hope to send out sometime in the next two months.

A Call to Sow

Great problems call for many small solutions
---Wendell Berry, American farmer, writer, and philosopher

Our Great Food Problem and Several Small Solutions: A Call to Sow
Our current food system is a great problem. Like nearly all Americans, we, in West Contra Costa County, subsist on products from a highly-industrialized food system. As a community, we currently do not have even a small capacity to sustain ourselves without the food from this industrialized system. Below are examples of specific problems with this food system, followed by a few ways we can work locally to develop small solutions to begin solving our great food problem.

GREAT PROBLEMS
Study after study documents the negative environmental, public health, and social effects of our current food system.

•Environmental Effects: Pesticides in our water---A US Geological Survey study of more than 1,000 streams in 51 different watersheds across the country detected agricultural pesticides more than 90% of the time in urban, rural, and mixed-use areas. Sampling of more than 5,000 wells detected pesticides more than 50% of the time in rural, urban, and mixed-use areas[1]. Based on these nationwide samples, it is reasonable to assume there are pesticides in many of our streams and wells here in West Contra Costa County. Our current food system pollutes our water.

•Public Health Effects: Obesity epidemic--- Here in West Contra Costa County, 42% of 5th graders tested in 2002 were overweight or obese. A study by the Bloomberg School of Public Health found that if the rate of obesity and overweight continues to climb at its current pace, by 2015, 75 percent of American adults will be overweight or obese.[2] A California Department of Health Services study estimated that overweight and obesity among adults cost Californians more than $8 billion dollars annually due to medical costs, lost productivity, and worker’s compensation claims[3]. Our current food system contributes significantly to one of the greatest threats to our public health---the obesity epidemic.
•Social Effects: Shaping impressionable minds A key component of our industrialized food system is a strong marketing campaign by food companies. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that in 2000 food companies spent a total of $26 billion dollars in advertising, a 65% increase in just 10 years[4]. According to the Institute of Medicine, in 2002 food companies spent between $10 and $12 billion dollars on advertising aimed specifically at children[5]. What has been the result of all this investment? American children ages 8-12 on average see more than 50 hours a year of food advertisements (or 7,600 individual ads), nearly half of it for snacks, sweets, and fast food and virtually none of it for healthy produce[6]. In other words, American 8-12 year olds now spend, on average, more than 0.25% of their lives being programmed to consume unhealthy foods. Our current food system turns agricultural products into consumer products; food marketers then train our children to become voracious consumers of unhealthy products.

As these three examples illustrate, the American food system is indeed a “great problem” in need of reform. But what are we, in West Contra Costa County, to do about this situation? Recent Congressional developments suggest exactly what NOT to do---we should not look for big solutions to our great problem.

Do NOT Expect the Federal Government to Initiate Food System Reform: The federal government has been one of the primary architects of the current food system, shaping it with billions of dollars of federal spending. Over the past 10 years, for example, the USDA has encouraged farmers to produce a surplus of commodities like corn, wheat, rice, and cotton by paying out more than $100 billion in subsidies. These payments indirectly subsidize the agricultural chemical industry and the cost of unhealthy processed foods products like Coca-Cola, Doritos, and Big Macs. In this year’s Farm Bill, Congress will outline USDA priorities and spending through 2012. At this point, it appears likely that the 2007 Farm Bill will continue to invest tens of billions of dollars into a food and agriculture system that makes our children sick, degrades our environment, and erodes our self-reliance while pushing us towards thoughtless over-consumption. We have no reason to expect “great solutions” to our food system problem here, nor anywhere else in the country.

SMALL SOLUTIONS
There are a great many small solutions for West Contra Costa County food system. The 5% Local Coalition has already started building a sustainable, healthy, and just food system by developing local food production. We need your help to turn our backyards, parks, schools, and other public open spaces into a local foodshed producing healthy fruits and vegetables.

Edible Landscaping Everywhere:
If we, as a community, value healthy, fresh, affordable, chemical-free produce for our children and all members of our community, there is something simple and radical we can do. We can grow it ourselves. We can surround ourselves with tantalizing fruits, berries, and nuts.

We already spend millions of dollars every year in West Contra Costa County building or rebuilding schools, parks, churches, community centers, libraries, and government offices. Each of these projects includes significant up-front expenditures for installing ornamental landscaping, as well as ongoing landscaping maintenance costs. For little or no additional cost, we could choose beautiful plants which also produce delicious, healthy foods---blueberries, raspberries, citrus, plum, and passionfruits could be planted instead of lindens, arbutus, and multiflora roses. A single mature fruit tree could provide hundreds of pounds of fruit a year to an office, school, or hospital. Once established, olive trees require little irrigation and are nearly indestructible, producing food for hundreds of years. Raspberry, blackberry, and blueberry bushes planted anywhere a child regularly passes by will be picked clean, providing children with valuable phytonutrients. Edible landscaping would bring healthy food choices closer to us and reconnect our communities and culture to the cycle of the seasons.

You can help embed the value of fresh produce in our community and physical environment by planting food-bearing trees, bushes, and vines at your home and at your workplace. You can also join the 5% Local Coalition on Saturday, August 11th at our second Berryland workday on the Richmond Greenway as we install more planters and fill them with raspberry bushes for youngsters to enjoy next summer. Edible landscaping is one of the many small solutions to our great food system problem.

A Farmer for Every School:
Twice in our nation’s history, during each of the World Wars, American schoolchildren have contributed significantly to the American food supply by tending food gardens at schools. This strategy is even more appropriate today. As a community, we can explore ways to establish a funding stream to support a farmer at every school. School farmers could engage students in growing food to improve our local food system. Not only would a school farmer program increase the amount of healthy, organic produce available in our community, but would most likely increase the amount of healthy produce our children actually eat. In 2000, a survey of California teens by the California Department of Health and Human Services revealed that teens who had grown food in a garden ate, on average, more than 20% more produce than those who had not[7]. The 5% Local Coalition is already developing two models by which school farmers can help children improve their own food supply:

•Student Farmers: A school farmer can mentor small groups of student farmers developing and tending their own garden beds. Working just three hours a week under the mentorship of a school farmer, student farmers could easily tend 150 square feet of garden bed space. In our climate, gardens easily yield between 1 and 2 pounds per square foot of bed space annually. This means each student farmer could realistically grow and take home 150 to 300 pounds of fresh, organic produce each year. This amount of produce represents between 46% and 93% of the total produce intake recommended by the World Health Organization. On average, California kids currently consume just 186 pounds of fruits and vegetables a year so many students could grow the equivalent of their entire intake of fruits and vegetables a year.

A pilot version of this program, the Lincoln Farm Project will start this fall with 20 Lincoln Elementary afterschool students who will build and tend approximately 50 garden beds along the Lincoln Greenway. Check future 5% Local Coalition newsletters for periodic updates on this pilot project and to look for ways you can contribute to it.

•School Produce Stand: Tending individual garden plots may not be the most effective strategy to engage students in food production in all situations. For some schools, it makes more sense to have communal garden space in which large numbers of students can work with a school farmer, teachers, and volunteers to produce healthy, nutritious food. These communal school mini-farms can improve the local food system by hosting regular produce sales after school at the school site.

In April of this year, the Verde Partnership Garden at Verde Elementary School in North Richmond began just such a program, launching the biweekly Verde Market. The Verde Market sells almost entirely produce grown onsite and is one of the only sources for fresh produce in North Richmond. In the past four months, the Verde Market has contributed hundreds of pounds of organic produce to the North Richmond food system. As the garden staff and students fine-tune their production methods and improve their soil, the Verde Market will eventually provide thousands of pounds of produce to North Richmond annually.

A CALL TO SOW
A recent study by the Associated Press revealed that of the 57 federal nutrition education programs (costing well over $1 billion dollars), only 4 successfully improved student nutrition. Exhorting schoolchildren to improve their nutrition, without addressing the underlying systemic factors for poor nutrition has proven largely ineffective. By filling our communal spaces with edible landscaping, we can take direct action to surround ourselves with healthy, delicious food. By establishing school mini-farms under the direction of school farmers, we could stop talking to our children about nutrition and instead empower our students to produce their own healthy food. As a community, we, in West Contra Costa County, do not have to wait for the federal government to improve the food system. Heeding the advice of Wendell Berry, we can work locally to find the many small solutions to our great food problem. Please join the 5% Local Coalition by registering online at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/5percentlocal/ or by contacting Park Guthrie at (510) 691-5051. Or just go out and sow something healthy and delicious to eat.




[1] From Pesticides in the Nation’s Streams and Groundwater, 1992-2001. USGS Circular 1291, March 2006 at http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2005/1291/pdf/circ1291_chapter1.pdf
[2] From Obesity Rates Continue To Climb In The United States in Medical News Today, July 11, 2006 at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/76484.php

[3] From The Economic Costs of Physical Inactivity, Overweight, and Obesity in California Adult:Health Care, Workers’ Compensation, and Lost Productivity. At http://www.dhs.ca.gov/cdic/cpns/press/downloads/CostofObesityToplineReport.pdf

[4] From Food Marketing Costs at a Glance by Howard Elltzak at
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/FoodReview/septdec01/FRv24i3g.pdf

[5] Advertising, Marketing, and the Media Institute of Medicine Fact Sheet, September 2004 at http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/22/609/fact%20sheet%20-%20marketing%20finaBitticks.pdf

[6] Food for Thought: Television Food Advertising to Children in the United States by the Kaiser Family Foundation, March, 2007 at http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/7618ES.pdf

[7] http://www.dhs.ca.gov/ps/cdic/cpns/research/calteens2000.html

E-Newsletter Correction and Elaboration

ECOVILLAGE FARM LEARNING CENTER WORKDAY

SATURDAY JUNE 9th

Correction: The foundation for the greenhouses should be complete. Saturday's workday will be to work on the above ground structures of the greenhouse.

Please consider stopping by that day if you can. EcoVillage Farm is located at 12 Laural Lane, just off May Road/San Pablo Dam Rd. (right behind Sheldon Elementary School)For more info, you can e-mail Shyaam at sms2000@aol.com, or call 510-329-1214

Also, in the e-newsletter, I erroneously stated that EcoVillage had recently planted 25 fruit trees. The correct number is 60 and will plant 40 more by the end of this season.

WHY DEVELOP THE LOCAL FOODSHED?

Quotes and links related to massive and sudden disruption in the food system
(1) Tommy Thompson, former US Health and Human Service Director in 2004
"I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do," [Tommy Thompson, former US Health and Human Services Director] said [in his resignation speech in 2004].”
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5274022.stm

(2) Excerpt from “Avian Flu: A Test of Collective Integrity”by Susan Penfield and John Larkin
“ Neither governments nor corporations will be able to distribute food on a large scale in a pandemic crisis. The government will likely direct the general population to stay in their homes to minimize contagion. However, people will inevitably disobey such orders when there are widespread shortages of food, water, and other essentials. Therefore, both local police forces and individuals should be prepared, thinking ahead about the ways in which neighborhoods could safeguard themselves and survive the most difficult weeks."
Found at http://www.strategy-business.com/press/16635507/06201
Also see related report at http://www.boozallen.com/media/file/Influenza_Pandemic_Simulation.pdf

3. Excerpt from
U.S. companies prepare for bird flu pandemic
Tue Feb 6, 2007 8:24pm ET

Jay Schwartz, vice president of information systems at North Carolina-based Alex Lee Inc., is worried about what will happen when food supplies begin to get scarce as people become ill, stay home to care for children when schools close or tend to ill relatives.
"Security is a huge issue," Schwartz, whose company owns a chain of grocery stores and an institutional food supplier, told a conference in Orlando.
Big food trucks may be targeted by bandits. "Maybe we'll have someone riding shotgun for added security," Schwartz told the Business Preparedness for Pandemic Influenza summit, sponsored by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Found at http://www.internet-grocer.net/birdflu1.htm

Take-home points:
•Many reasonable, informed people think there is a decent chance we will face serious disruptions in our food supply at some point in the future.
•Many private companies are paying lots of money to draw up contingency plans. At least one private grocery business is seriously considering shipping food under armed guard.
•Recent history has shown that states and communities cannot expect the federal government to provide timely emergency supplies. Consider that in a pandemic, most of the country may be in crisis simultaneously. West Contra Costa County probably will not make FEMA’s highest priority list for emergency food relief during a national crisis brought about by an agriterrorism incident or a flu pandemic.
•If any of these scenarios come to pass, we will be grateful for miles of fruit, nut, and olive trees lining the Richmond Greenway, large-plot community gardens at every city park, production gardens at every school, kitchen gardens in every backyard, and widely dispersed food production knowledge and activity which the 5% Local Coalition hopes to facilitate.

Gardening Along the Richmond Greenway---A Vision

Gardening Along the Richmond Greenway
Our Vision
It is early on a sunny Saturday morning in August of 2010, a perfect time for a stroll along the Richmond Greenway. You enter the Greenway at 23rd Street, where you, you greet three neighbors who have just finished tending their community garden plots. They invite you into sit with them in shade of the grape arbor which serves as the Community Garden Living Room. They need the help of an objective judge to settle their long-standing rivalry over who grows the tastiest tomatoes. You are happy to sample their prize entries, but wise enough to declare the contest too close to call. Explaining that you’ll need more samples in the future before you can issue a final ruling, you move on.
A short distance away, you notice an intent teenager and his five year-old sister in a large, neat, fenced-in garden plot. The young man hustles to harvest green beans, tree collards, zucchinis, and bundles of cilantro. He pauses only to give instructions to his sister who is filling ten paper bags with the produce. A sign explains that this is a Community Support Agriculture micro-farm managed by the young man with the help of a local non-profit. Neighboring residents can purchase subsidized produce bag subscriptions with Food Stamps, ensuring them a steady supply of affordable, fresh organic produce. Between the subscription charge and the subsidy, the young man earns $10 for each bag of produce he delivers, about $200 a month (minus the pocket money he gives his young sister). The work is hard and the hourly rate comes out to be pretty close to minimum wage, but he knows his contribution to the community is important and the experience running his own business is invaluable. You wave to them as they notice you, and you move on, not wanting to keep them from their work.
At 21st Street,, you pass a series of trees heavy with fruit…apples, pears, lemons, figs, and a dozen more varieties that you don’t recognize. You have arrived at the Linear Orchard. Signs at each tree and a central interpretive kiosk explain each variety, cultivation techniques, ripening times, and serving suggestions. The kiosk also has flyers announcing dates of various workshops offered here throughout the year: winter and summer pruning, drip irrigation, and fruit tree grafting. You are in the mood for an apple, but the early ripening Gravenstein tree has been picked clean and the Braeburns aren’t quite ripe yet. You make a mental note to return for the Braeburns in two weeks and move on.

A hummingbird passes directly in front of you, pauses in midair and then flits off, leading your eye towards the California Native Plant Garden. You watch it feast frantically, bouncing between the scarlet flowers of a California fuschia. A sign explains the importance of native plant gardening for both water conservation and preserving local biodiversity.

As you pass the Peace Garden, near the intersection with 18th Street, your mood grows somber. A variety of trees, flower beds, murals, and 3-dimensional garden art memorialize individual victims of violence. You pause, whisper a prayer, and walk on in silent reflection.

Joyful shrieks lift your spirits as you reach your final destination…Berryland. Here, dozens of children of all ages, race between thirty varieties of berry bushes. Some of the children can’t contain their delight when they find a hidden pocket of ripe raspberries and call out to their friends. Others keep their discoveries to themselves and munch away quietly savoring the taste of late summer. A young neighbor you know runs up and blurts out the berry report: “Yellow raspberries are perfect right now, but the red currants won’t be prime for another couple weeks yet!” She scampers off to feast some more. After three years, the neighborhood kids have learned to mark the seasons by the delicious treats ripening along the Greenway. You sample a few berries, but decide to leave most of them for the kids. Not only does Berryland help the children get their 5-a-day servings of fruits and vegetables, but it also helps develop the habit at a young age of eating a wide variety of produce early---an important factor in preventing many common chronic health problems.

Inspired, refreshed, and connected, you head home passing through an archway decorated with tiles made from brightly colored artwork created by Lincoln Elementary school students. As you walk, your mind wanders, reflecting on all of the benefits the Greenway has brought to the community. You resolve to make your Saturday greenway stroll a regular event.