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

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

500lbs of fresh produce each week from the yard of a Brooklyn High School

Gardens That Grow on Walls

Vertical gardens — which began as an experiment in 1988 by Patrick Blanc, a French botanist intent on creating a garden without dirt — are becoming increasingly popular at home. Avid and aspiring gardeners, frustrated with little outdoor space, are taking another look at their walls and noticing something new: more space. And a number of companies are selling ready-made systems and all-in-one kits for gardeners like Mr. Riley who want to do it themselves. (For those who prefer to leave it to the professionals, landscape designers can build vertical gardens for a hefty fee.)

In the last few years, companies that sell green wall supplies have seen a jump in sales. ELT, an Ontario company that specializes in green roofs, began selling living wall systems a little over three years ago and is now one of the biggest suppliers to the United States. Greg Garner, the company’s president, said that its green-wall sales have increased 300 percent since 2008. Four months ago, the company introduced a cheaper, lighter kit to make living walls accessible to the average gardener; prices start at about $40 for a one-square-foot panel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/garden/06vertical.html?ref=garden

The Rise of Company Gardens

fresh carrots from a compnay garden

The trend has caught on at more-traditional companies, too. At the headquarters for the Kohl’s department stores near Milwaukee, the organic gardens provide vegetables for a local food bank and a place for children at the company child care center to play. Abundant crops of pumpkins and tomatoes grow at the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Ky.

A National Gardening Association survey done in conjunction with Harris shows that 41 million Americans grew fruits and vegetables in 2009. That’s about 13 percent more than the year before.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/dining/12gardens.html?8dpc

Our Supporters Rock!!!

A Special Thank from the Ananda Harvest Team to all of you who Helped Us Reach Our Goal on Kickstarter!!!!!!!!!!

Thank You!!!