Dear Harvest Volunteers

Dear Harvest Volunteers,

Please join us throughout this magical season and help keep our garden & programs growing strong.

This year we look forward to:

Growing veggies & herbs for the Ashram kitchen.
Planting flower gardens throughout the grounds
.Clearing/cleaning hiking trails & walking paths
Planting & maintaining the many beautiful fruit trees around the Ashram
Developing educational workshops for YOU to learn more about sustainable living & agriculture.

The exchange is minimal and the opportunity invaluable.

If you’d like to come and grow with us, please call the Ashram office at 845.782.5575 and tell them you’re with the Harvest.

You’ll make a reservation to stay in a dorm room, the Harvest cabin or bring a tent and pay a small donation of $35 for a dorm or $28 for cabin/tent (until June 15th).  We ask that you work on one of our projects for three hours each day and enjoy all the vegetarian food, yoga, meditation & nature your heart desires.

We guarantee you’ll leave feeling great and want to come back often.  If you have any questions you can email volunteer@anandaharvest.org and one of our Founding Farmers will be happy to connect with you.

Peace,
Ananda Harvest

Spring Kickoff 2011: Earth Day Weekend

Not Just A Container: A Contest!

As a follow up to our post on turning shipping containers into homes and offices, I came across this contest taking place in Brooklyn.  Turn a Shipping container into a Dekalb Market Food Stand for Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall Early Summer Market.

Deklab Market Container Article

Urban Space presents ‘NOT JUST A CONTAINER’, a competition to uncover the most creative and innovative use for a shipping container to be located in a downtown Brooklyn retail location.

“of salvaged shipping containers, will bring together Brooklyn’s creative entrepreneurs in a community setting that will include an incubator farm, food market, events and performance venue, and a collection of eateries and work-sell spaces.

The goal of the competition is to support the growth of Brooklyn’s creative community by helping a local entrepreneur realize his or her dream of opening a bricks and mortar location and to raise awareness of the Dekalb Market.”

SUBMISSION. To be eligible, each submission must strictly read and comply with all the criteria and rules of the contest.Online entry using our online submission form is the quickest and easiest way to submit your work. Urban Space is not responsible for electronic transmission errors resulting in omission, interruption, deletion, delay in transmission.

Turn This (Shipping Container) Into This (Home)

Large cargo containers are great for storing and transporting furniture, of course, but turning these containers into homes is becoming an alternative for affordable housing. There are many uses for cargo homes, from temporary housing for disaster relief to college dorm housing. Cargo homes are becoming more and more popular because they are inexpensive and so easy to build.

How To Make A Home with Cargo

Here is a hometown favorite Roberta’s who uses there shipping container for a Radio Show and Rooftop GreenHouse

See more examples here: 12 more

Looking for Farm Land?

So you want to start farming but you are having a hard time with the financial hurdle of buying a nice piece of farmable land.

I came across this today and found it quite interesting.    The Farmer Landowner Match program,

I have land but don’t have time to farm it,  You want to farm but don’t have the land

Let’s make a match.  See below for more benefits.

http://clctrust.org/match.php

This could be yours!

SUPPORT LOCAL FARMS

• Many landowners are interested in promoting agriculture and taking advantage of financial benefits.
• Many farmers are searching for more land to work, yet the price of land is a major hurdle
• CLC values farming because it provides open space, wildlife habitat, protects the
  environment, and conserves the rural character of the county.

LANDOWNER BENEFITS

“If you are a landowner, you should really consider leasing to a farmer. Aside from the tax benefits, it’s a terrific sense of accomplishments that you are doing something to preserve good farmland.“

-Dwayne Powell, leases 46 acres to Threshold Farms

If you have open farmland that you do not use, having a farmer lease your land may benefit you, the farmer, and the community. A successful farmer match may provide:

• Lower taxes due to the Agricultural Property Tax Assessment
• Free or low cost upkeep of your lands
• Improved soil quality
• Rental income
• A share of the produce from your land
• Good care of your land, and putting it to good use

FARMER BENEFITS

“As a young business, we are
putting any available capital
into growing livestock.”

–Owen O’Connor, Awesome Farms

Leasing land enables Awesome Farms in Claverack to focus on farming and meeting the increasing demands for local food without the additional burden of mortgage payments.

If you are looking for land to start or expand a farm operation, CLC may be able to help. A successful lease may enable you to:

• Find affordable land
• Expand your operation, or establish yourself in the farming community
• Lower your capital investment for startup and operating expenses
• Share the risk and profit of farming with the landowner
• Gain experience running a farm before purchasing one

LEASES

Once the match has been made, CLC will provide model leases to the parties. The farmer and landowner will work out the specific provisions of the lease together. We will identify important issues to be addressed such as:

• Form of payment
• Long term vs. short term leases
• Type of farming
• Expenses
• Termination agreement

Cultivating Mushrooms

The Masters of Mycelium
A third-generation of mushroom men farms the Hudson Valley.

…..early 1980s, the farmed fungus sector had all but collapsed. Large commercial mushroom operations that had popped up in Pennsylvania, cheap imported caps from China and rising fuel prices worldwide helped put nearly all of New York’s family-run mushroom farms out of business. And while a handful of tiny independent businesses are still at work, most of the older operations have turned from farming to distribution.

All except for the Bulichs, who today operate the last fully functioning mushroom farm in the state-thanks in part to Frank Bulich’s foresight in the 1980s, when the second-generation mushroom grower, unlike his fellow farmers, noted a coming demand for varieties other than standard white buttons.

http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/march-april-2010/the-foodshed.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/garden/15mushrooms.html?scp=1&sq=mushroom%20stamets&st=cse

Note: If you would be interested in a workshop on Mushroom Cultivations please  leave a reply comment

From New York’s Black Dirt, a Glacial Secret Told by Onions

black dirt

RICH SOIL The black earth in Orange County, N.Y., grows some of the best cooking onions.

THROUGH an odd twist of geological fate, some of North America’s most fertile soil lies an hour’s drive from Manhattan pavement, in the 22 square miles of Orange County, N.Y., known as the “Black Dirt” region.

So what do farmers grow in this miracle earth? For about a century, the area has been known for onions, producing some of the spiciest alliums available, thanks to the soil’s high sulfur content, which boosts pyruvic acid, that irritating and delicious compound that makes eyes well up at the cutting board.

A visit to a New York City Greenmarket bears out that legacy: at the stands of Paffenroth Gardens, from Warwick, and S. & S.O. Produce Farms from Goshen, the onions on display ­ bunches of slender, magenta-colored scallions to shallots the size and hue of hazelnuts ­ seem to make up a full third of each farm’s offerings.

The vast majority of onions grown in the Black Dirt ­ or “muck soil,” as it’s known locally ­ are nevertheless those plain-Jane yellow storage onions, about the size of a baseball (and just as hard) with a coppery paper skin, the kind sold in East Coast grocery stores in two-, three- and five-pound mesh bags. They’re virtually anonymous in the marketplace; you’ll know they were grown in the Black Dirt towns of Warwick, Goshen, Florida and Pine Island only if you read the fine print, or spy the jet-black soil that occasionally still clings to their roots.Black Dirt

Lawn 2.0: Natural Lawn Care

Excerpt from Justin West’s masters dissertation

‘Unlawning what we have lawned’

Lawns are to me an embodiment of the confusion which we as a society are experiencing. Lawns reflect our desire, conscious or unconscious, to control our surroundings and separate ourselves. Lawns (urban parks aside) are actually rarely used in the recreational activities for which they are well designed. They are a leftover from the 17th and 18th century European gentry when landowners were few and labour was cheap. They have continued to act as status symbols, and have spread extensively, particularly in the US following the suburban sprawl of post- WWII. In a NASA sponsored study lawns in the US were estimated to cover 32 million acres.

It is the most extensive irrigated crop in the country (about three times that of corn). 50-70% of residential water is used for irrigation. The collective maintenance budget of this ‘crop’ was in the range of 29 billion dollars in 2002, or roughly 1,200 dollars/using household. That something so wasteful can be a sign of wealth is understandable, but how something so lacking in health and diversity can be a sign of wealth is a reflection upon the dearth of ecological education in our society.

The lawn, it seems, separates us like a moat from the untidiness of our surroundings-be they the neighbour’s property, or a stretch of unmanaged woodland. Neighbours come and go, the woodland grows denser and more entangled, but the lawn-moat remains, an embodiment of a seemingly timeless order. This form of tidiness is in actuality, as Bill Mollison says, ‘maintained disorder.’ Lawns are spatially extended without regard for temporality. The striving forward into complexity and diversity is stunted by each pass of the whirring blades. Our abilities to perceive life’s movements juxtaposed with its durational qualities are rendered virtually obsolete in wastelands of ‘lawnliness.’

Due to their very design forest gardens have high potential for replacing unnecessary and unused residential lawns. They are complex and diverse, which means they are not well suited for large scale mechanized operations. However, they are very low maintenance, but require frequent periodic human participation, mostly in the form of harvesting abundant food crops. And…

…they are beautiful.

Click Here for Video on This Topic

Practice Natural Lawn Care

It’s easy to save time and money by putting these steps to work for a beautiful yard.

Mow higher, mow regularly and leave the clippings.

Mow more frequently when grass is actively growing so that you are only cutting no more than one-third of the height of the grass. This practice minimizes the amount of grass clippings. The desired height of grass varies depending on climate. Contact your local Cooperative Extension office for local recommendations. “Grasscycling,” or leaving the clippings on the lawn, doesn’t cause thatch build up—but it does make lawns healthier. Soil organisms recycle the clippings into free fertilizer, and you save all the work of bagging. Modern mulching lawn mowers make “grasscycling” even easier and homeowners can reduce their mowing time by 30 to 40 percent by not having to bag clippings.

Honey, I Shrunk the Lawn!

• Grass grows best on level, well-drained soil in full sun or part shade.
• Consider alternatives to grass on steep slopes, shady areas or near streams and lakes.
• In these areas, it takes a lot of extra work (and sometimes chemicals) to maintain grass.
• Look for other plants, such as ground covers, better suited to soggy soil, slopes or heavy shade.
• Leave or plant a “buffer” of dense native vegetation along streams and lakes to filter and slow run-off, shade and cool the water, provide homes for wildlife and prevent bank erosion.

Lawns need only about one inch of rain a week in summer to stay green. Or you can let areas of lawn that don’t get heavy wear go brown and dormant— they’ll bounce back in the fall.

Overseeding can improve the quality of your lawn.

• Core aerate in the fall to improve root development and water penetration.
• Follow by overseeding thin areas of lawn with grass seed blends recommended for your area.
• Then “top-dress” by raking in quarter- to half-inch of compost to cover the seed and improve the soil.
• Repeat these steps annually as needed to improve poor lawns.

How  Grass  Grows

Fundamental Organic Honey Beekeeping

Hi Gardeners, Janaka here. Ananda Harvest’s Beekeeper. I am proud to announce that Cornell Cooperative Extension-Rockland Office will host a beekeeping workshop on January 23rd from 1-4pm

In this basic beekeeping workshop we will cover:

• Mechanics of a hive
• Necessary tools
• Elements of site selection
• Gain an understanding of the naturalist approach to keeping honeybees
• Honeybee health and disease management
• Seasonal management and methods of organic treatment
• This hands-on workshop, which includes assembling a wooden hive, will provide the beginner honey beekeeper with practical knowledge and resources for continued study.
• We will also speak about the value and importance this integral insect holds in holistic farm and garden systems, especially in biodynamics.

Instructor: Jack Daly – Jack is a natural beekeeper who learned the craft six years ago from Gunther Hauk, world-renowned beekeeper, star and author of “Queen of the Sun”, “Vanishing of the Bees” and “Toward Saving the Honey Bee”, respectively. After numerous trainings and practice, Jack has given bee related presentations and led organic beekeeping workshops and classes throughout the local area. “Honeybees are in severe decline and billions are dying off each year as a result of pathogens, parasites and numerous stressors.” His interest is breeding mite resistant honeybees.

Program Fee: $75.00 per individual, $150.00 per family

Location: Cornell Cooperative Extension, 10 Patriot Hills Drive, Stony Point, NY 10980

I Met the Walrus- Reporter has an Artistic informal chat w/John Lennon

I Met The Walrus

Worldmeter-Interesting site with some startling statistics!

Worldmeter Click the button! Go for it! Do it! You know you want to!!!!

Featuring Our Backyard, Stories from Orange County NY

Shabazz

Last week at Ananda, the name Shabazz came up and it stuck with me for a couple reasons, one

my friend knows his daughter who owns a local Brooklyn eatery.  But the main reason his name stuck with me was because, he has been working in the area of compost for many years now, and uses a system called Zero Waste…  He has been able to divert garbage from Marist College, and Vassar and the local neighborhoods in Orange County and create a successful composting facility that has been capturing carbon, providing farmers with great compost, and regenerating “brown field” sites.

Keep up the great work Shabazz….

Shabazz

Shabazz Jackson belongs to a group of rare people–those who have maintained their idealism throughout the evolution of their careers. Rarer still, he’s managed to put his ideas into practice with meaningful results. For nearly 35 years, this Beacon native has been acting on a single mission–how to deal with the consequences of waste from our over-packaged, over-producing and overly consuming culture. Jackson has led his own non-profit, worked for local government and run his own business. He was a trailblazer of the early recycling movement and,later,found a niche remediating environmental contamination in the Hudson Valley.

The Valley Table

City Sprouting: Urban Farming Continues….

Ikea Background

See the link below some great Urban Farming Shots….

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/05/07/dining/0507-URBAN_2.html

New York Water Security Is In Jeopardy?

Hydraulic Fracturing is one of those terms that most people say, huh, what is that?

I recently watched a documentary by Josh Fox, a Pennsylvania state resident who received a letter from Haliburton, offering him around $100k to lease his land to “frack” for natural gas.
Well Josh before signing that lease decided to take a look into this hidden but serious threat that is occurring all over the US  by the natural gas companies.  Guess what this may be coming to a county near you.  The upstate watershed, the largest clean water watershed in the country.  The economy upstate is making this a very hard thing to say hell no.  Hey why are we even considering this?

Take a look at the trailerGas Land Trailer

Real life FarmVille in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Farmers Market