collingswood farmers market

So I have been trying to figure out how to get my hands on some heirloom tomato plants. Yeah, I could have grown them from seed but I spaced out. Also, I recently read about last years blight (which stalled my tomato plants as well as everyone in South Jerseys) and I'm taking the very logical advice to heart. Diversify. Works on the financial scene, why not in my back yard? It seems the opportunistic blight had an easy time spreading from plant to plant while most of the "Big Boys" hung out together in a grow house waiting to be shipped to your local Home Depot.

Several options have come to light to procure a "striped zebra" or "brandywine". Berlin farmer's market has a guy with plants all season & summer long but if you are in the know (oh-so-garden-speak-easy!)show up within the first few weeks & you can get some heirloom varieties to pump up your planting portfolio. I haven't heard of a password or special knock, just bringing some cash should do it.

This Saturday, however, I will be exploring option number one. Collingswood farmers market. Just checked out their most recent newsletter (you can too. click on the title above) and I'll be heading over bright & early. Once I have dusted off my reusable market bag, that is. A girls gotta be prepared. And prepared I am for some growers "extras". I'll keep you posted, so to speak!

back story

It's funny, I think I may have mislead you a bit. Funny ha ha or peculiar...you can be the judge. As I was brainstorming my next post, I went back to see what I've been ranting about since carving out my little corner of cyber space. I am truly all over the green map. But my journey didn't just pop up on March 18th with my first post.

So a little back story... My mom & grandmother started me on this path when I was a wee lassie ( a bit heavy huh?). Even though I wouldn't necessarily label either lovely ladies as environmentalist, both are absolutely animal-loving, naturalists. My childhood was full of animals (local & exotic) with tons of adventure walks through the woods. Nature has always been my playground. Whether camping, horseback riding or paddling down a windy river in the Pine Barrens.

And like any self respecting parent, my mom taught me manners. Beyond please & thank you, I was taught to leave a space, indoors or out, better than before I was there. To let the lake newts, my brother & I were obsessed with catching, back where we found them instead of carting 'em away in a plastic cup. Trash, on the other hand, was absolutely carted away! So you can see, from a young age it was instilled in me to be respectful of the earth & all it's animals. Even my pesky cat, Kramer, who attacked my feet as I walked by unaware. I miss that crazy cat!

So many of the lessons I learned from these smart ladies have trickled into my daily life. I now take my kids on walks through the woods & call them back from racing ahead to see a fern unfurling on the mossy ground or a tent-like nest of caterpillars. We usually pick up trash along the way. I always forget the handi wipes & a bag but we manage anyway. It's nice to take these moments together to make discoveries & enjoy ourselves.

In this blog & in my life, I am working out ways to leave this big beautiful ball of green & blue better than before I came. There is a native american belief that any action we take today will be felt for 7 generations, good or bad. I am hoping for the good for my kids & the nature walks they will take with their kids.

smile

Happy Earth Day...can't blog today communing with nature! see you on the flip side.

water week

The reviews are in & we're spreading the word. Waterweek is cool. In the Gramigna house it's been "kid tested /mom approved". And just in time for our school's trash free lunch week (earth day, people). One word to the wise, you can pick them up at Home Goods stores for half the cost but act fast. And one more word (I'm full of them, aren't I?), I am ordering the kids size this week because the tall bottles are messing up the fridge mojo and take up more than their fair share of real estate in the lunchboxes. The big ones will come in handy for sports outings & the big kid playdates. No more lawn littered with water bottles & capri sun packs.

click on the title water week to start shopping & maybe your kids will think your cool too. Good luck.

Food Inc.

PBS is airing this academy nominated documentary on April 21 (check our local listings for time). Just watching this film will be an informative & perhaps shocking journey on it's own. But if you are like me, I'm thinking of making it a night truly about food. Sustainable potluck that is. Check out the link above (click on the title Food Inc) for how to host your own potluck & maybe score some free loot.

Also, just take a peek at this trailer. It's an intriging 2 minutes, I promise you!

progress

We are having fun checking the progress of our little patch of cultivated goodness. The kids & I were celebrating the arrival of radish sprouts this morning. WooHoo! The lettuce is almost to pretty to cut. But I think I need to get back out there & do it. Maybe we can spread some lettuce joy by delivering it around the hood. Kinda like "ding, dong, ditch" for the veggie set.

mocked, yet again

once again, mother nature is screwing with me. Even a neglected bird feeder is sprouting near the garden. Or wait, could it be a simple case of the grass is greener? Maybe the poor saturated seeds have been admiring from afar all the sprouting going on in our sturdy (read... hurricane grade) garden box, it has willed itself to do the same. No, I think this post is about my mind going to seed!

come on last frost

The glint in my eye is somewhat diminished. I would like my counter tops, laundry room & even the top of the piano to be freed from oppression. The seedlings need to go outdoors & soon! I have already learned root vegetables ( they are in the garden germinating as I ruminate, hopefully), are best sown directly in the garden. Belles of Ireland (cool flower which is overpriced in the supermarket) are another finicky character which doesn't like to be transplanted...the packaging at the garden center made me do it! And i have no idea if my measly looking tomato plants will ever bear fruit. But my cucumbers are still indoors & looking mighty fine, if I say so myself. There are plenty so if you find a coffee cup on your doorstep with a leafy vine tumbling out, consider it my pay it forward in veggie speak. My zinnias & cosmos also look promising but found out through my info search that both would have done just fine sprinkled on the ground.

Hmmm, this has certainly been an adventure in wrong steps. But I am trying to take it all in & do it better next year. In the meantime, I am waiting for the last frost which is supposed to be April 17th, today!! But the garden center gurus have warned not to plant before Mother's day. I plan on splitting the difference.

it's in the bag

Unless you've been living under a rock, you are aware of the cloth shopping bag phenomenon (it's as popular as tabloid stars getting their extra 15 minutes of fame on Dancing with the Stars. No offense Mrs. Gosselin). Conveniently available at the cash registers of almost anywhere you shop, including places like tar-jhay" and all kinds of grocery stores & pharmacies. Usually for a scant 99 cents. I even purchased one at a garden center. And if you are like me, you have accumulated quite a stash. In spite of all my good intentions though, I inevitably forget the darn things hanging on the hook right inside the back door. A lot of good that does me, right? So, as penance for a faulty memory(and more than my fair share of consumption in other areas), I now make all sorts of bag free purchases. And the reactions I get run the gamut from gracious to slightly annoyed to down right bewildered. It's just a bag people. Or lack thereof, anyway.

p.s. a plastic bag takes 500 to 1,000 years to break down, that's crazy right?

it's working, people

The grand plan to get green & get my kids to eat more green is really starting to blossom. (insert an annoying smiley face here).

I just harvested the first batch of lettuce from our little patch out back. And my kids kept trying different leaves, speckled & red. And the bright green. Most were spit out, mind you. But I am buoyed by the eagerness with which the sampling was repeated. Of course, William was very theatrical about his discards which cracked his sister up. He also requested some crunchy lettuce. Maybe there's still time to get romaine in, if not there's always next year!

spring fever

Tom (my other half) was working in the yard this past week & was downright gleeful! He is a runner, golfer & yard-straightening-junkie so our "snowmageddon" winter had him couped up & possibly cranky.

I knew the winds had changed when I came home from errands & this lovely arrangement greeted me. It's made up of clippings from our yard, Martha better watch out! I also heard the rambunctious chatter of boys, young & old, coming from the backyard. My husband is the pied piper of the 'hood so we usually have a game of baseball, football or basketball going on. Returning home to these comforting sights & sounds made me so thankful for spring. Woo hoo!

planting the seeds

Once again my foodie world & green worlds have overlapped. This past week I started culinary classes at The Restaurant School in philly. Nothing fancy, just a 6 week course on knife skills, basic sauces, etc. As I drove up to 42nd & walnut, I had a bad case of nerves. First day of school, ugh. Will the cool kids like me? But upon arriving I noticed a gentleman with a similar look of nerves & confusion (where the heck is the door???). We made fast friends. We were both early, out of breath from all the steps & in our totes was an over-abundance of kitchen tools.

As we started the preliminary chat about why we were here & how we like to cook (on a wing & a prayer), I found out he works for Fairmount park in the construction division. One thread of the conversation lead to another & I asked about community gardens in the park, another interest of mine. He said many gardens have come & gone because a facilitator/organizer really needs to helm these projects to keep the momentum going. But apparently there is or was a huge garden in the northwest part of the park. Not sure if the neighborhood is still considered koreatown but he & his crew watched the hardworking bunch harvest a cornucopia of foreign vegetables. Pretty cool was his final word on the subject before we were whisked into serious kitchens to perfect our cookery skills.

Further I went into this garden meets girl conversation (in my head, people!) while checking the Fair Food Farmstand website this very morning. If the picture of the fresh produce wasn't enough to get me seeing green then it was the shout out to urban farmers. The dept of parks & recreation is looking for a greenthumb to operate & manage small plots of commercial, chemical-free farms in Fairmount. The projects goal is to foster sustainability & urban agricultiral businesses in philly while supporting Philadelphia Food Chapter & Greenworks Philadelphia. Now there's a garden for the communtiy!

detour

Finally, yesterday was the day. I packed my three year old & adventurous mom into the car & off we went in search of the green depot in philly. My plan was to purchase reusable sandwich bags for William's lunch & possibly some cleaners. This was not to be. First we couldn't even find the place. And my mom & I pride ourselves on a good sense of direction. We called & realize we had driven by it 3 times.

A huge building supply place on state road called Marjam (2 brothers started it, the wives started green depot) houses the pot of green. Except there wasn't any leprechaun at the end of this rainbow, just an office full of somber salesman taking calls about traditional building supplies. I'm not sure I would have been anymore uncomfortable if I was tap dancing in the nude!

Our only reprieve was in the form of a nice young lady finishing up her call. She politely asked us if we needed any help. Apparently a lot. It turns out the green depot in philly is just a showroom tucked in the back of a colossal, thriving building supply company. In the interest of follow through, we made the trek to the back of the building & up a less than welcoming stairwell. We still ended up with a few cleaning supplies (couldn't make the poor girl open up the place for nothing).

After all this effort, I was a bit bummed out. But after mulling it over, this place was still very cool indeed. If you are designing or building in the future, there are a ton of cool eco-friendly products available & why not start in our own backyard.

small triumphs

I think by now you know I'm just an average mom getting up everyday & trying to manage the chaos. Some days I feel like "I am woman, hear me roar" & then others I feel like the lion left the building. Adding in my green mission has had the potential to throw the precarious balance (or multiple personalities) out of whack, but so far so good.

The most recent victory came in the form of a natural colored garment bag. I had started to pull those annoying paper shawls (you know the ones, they have the name of your dry cleaner printed on them, like you might forget) out of the pile of plastic dry cleaning bags stuffed in our bedroom trash to recycle them. Again in the interest of total disclosure, it was a mountain of plastic bags. A color came to mind, purple...the exact opposite of green! I needed a plan. Eliminating dry cleaning all together sounds about as practical as getting rid of our TVs( I have threatened this but not in the name of green). So, what else...the bags, definitely the bags. On the scene happens a multi hanger cloth garment bag. My dry cleaner lady, Katie, was very amiable to my new idea. One of these beauties hold 7 blue oxfords (joking, he wears stripes & plaid in blue as well). And a bonus I hadn't foreseen, no more paper bits proclaiming we "heart" our customers. I didn't mind the love, just the paper.

So we are on our way to being plastic & paper-free in this area, anyway. And I have been returning my hangers each week for a while now, not sure where this all puts me on the sliding scale of eco-ness. But I feel better.

here, there & everywhere

Today was one of those days. A lot going on. We've all had 'em right? For me there was a reoccurring theme though, besides whiny kids. Green. I am not kidding. Around every corner. I know what you are thinking, of course she's seeing green, duh. Like when you pick a new paint color for a room and suddenly all you see is that fabulous color everywhere. been there.

But seriously, I picked up a copy of Parenting magazine in my son's dentist office today & it was filled with recycled art projects. Some were very cute indeed-check out the butterflies made from egg cartons. Then I moved onto Philly mag for April. Grown up projects like shopping at Urban Jungle or reading the column on "Eco-friend or Eco-faux" (I actually chuckled, it's a good thing SpongeBob was on!) or having a beer at Yard's new tasting room (eco-friendly & refreshing) or reading about philly being the epicenter of a health food revolution-yup, I said philly.
Then back at home folding laundry & mindlessly listening to the TV, I was told to tune in at 11 to find out which water filtration systems had made the cut in their special report.

More importantly, though, was the symbolic green. My son, Will, saw me put some food scraps in our kitchen composter & he started digging in his backpack. He remembered the orange peels in his lunchbox & offered them up to help the cause. Cool, right? Or my conversation with Tom about CFL light bulbs at his golf club, again pretty cool. Or transplanting more of my seedlings into recycled coffee cups. All cool.

The best part of the day (not quiet though, remember whiny kids) was sitting outside for dinner & noticing how incredibly green one of our trees had become overnight. I am enjoying all the "greening up", hope you are too.

sweet discoveries ahead

After a crazy-busy, bunny & candy centric day, the kids are finally in bed & I have time to catch my breath. Whew!

I have so much swirling around in my head. The horizon is filled with many amazing events & discoveries. The 40th anniversary of Earth day is April 22. I'll keep you posted on my earth day project, once I think of it!!. I'm hoping to get my family of four involved. Cross your fingers. The more the merrier though, if you catch my drift.

Collingswood Farmer's Market opens May 1st and that hip, little enclave is hosting it's second annual Green Festival. This sounds right up my alley! There are going to be recycling bins for everything from sneakers to rechargeable & button batteries. Seminars on composting (residents can get a discounted bin), rain barrels (again with the discount) & all sorts of cool, "green" stuff. They are also rolling out a new Bike Share program. Get it rolling out. I crack myself up, at least. And, if that wasn't enough, Collingswood is the first town in Camden County to offer recycling on #3-7 plastics. Just so darn cool. I gotta talk to those folks, get some ideas & see if I can create a greener shade of life in Happyfield. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, right?

After mother's day, I get to put in all my little vegetables. They have already come a long way (excluding the unfortunate root vegetable incident, sorry guys) and my laundry room is starting to get very crowded! It's so hard to be patient. I'm dreaming of beautiful heirloom tomatoes!

So much research to do. Like watching Food Inc. an academy award nominated documentary that reveals shocking truths about what we eat & how it's produced. I heard through the grapevine PBS will air it sometime in April. Still trying to find out a time & date so I can set my dvr. It will be right next to Jaime Oliver's Food Revolution.

Product testing for waterweek. My son is the actual tester. I figure if it meets his approval maybe your kids might like it too. We'll let you know. Books & websites to read. Okay, I've got to go get this started but first just a few jellybeans.

lights out

Not sure how it goes in your house, but in mine, I am the light patrol. I knew this position existed but thought my step-father still held the title. What's the saying? With age comes wisdom. Or bills & responsibility, anyway. So now with my crown & scepter(and responsibility), I roam far & wide (to the third floor, at least) extinguishing lights. Sometimes, tv's, ipods & radios as well.

Through my cyber research I have been bombarded with numbers but here's one about lights. Compact flourescent light bulbs can save you on average $30 over the lifetime of the bulb, just one bulb! Pretty impressive, no? They also last 8-12 times longer than incandescent bulbs. I don't know about you but if I wasn't replacing a light bulb every time I turned around, I'd have more time to _______(fill in the blank). Right? Wouldn't you? Also, if you consider your household average, you probably have about 45 lightbulds in your home (I have 57, oops). Replace them all with "green" light bulbs & you could save yourself $180 a year.

So they save time, energy & money. Kinda easy. Now if I could just get everyone to turn 'em off when they leave a room. Not so easy.


Go to CBSNEWS.com to a story on "Green" light bulb buying guide. It'll help you get started, if you are feeling it.