Saturday, July 31st, BICYCLE TOUR OF LOCAL URBAN GARDENS AND A MINI FARM
Come and be inspired by local gardens and a mini farm in Berkeley, Albany and El Cerrito. All cyclists welcome. We will keep to bicycle-friendly routes (thanks to EBBC). There is no charge for this event, and no need to RSVP unless you want to come on the Early Bird Special. Please bring lunch, water, sunscreen, helmet, and, if you like, something to share from your garden. The Main Tour round trip is approximately six miles, with lengthy breaks!
(Note: next time we would like to include many more Albany gardens! Please contact transitionalbanyca at gmail.com to be included.)

EARLY BIRD SPECIAL (for those who RSVP only)
9:00 am

Simone’s mature quarter-acre plot in the El Cerrito hills, with bee hives, dozens of chickens, fruit trees and raised beds is well worth the climb if you’re up for it. This portion is for cyclists who don’t mind hills, though the route is a lot less steep than Moeser.
Please email Claire Norris at songsparrow22 at yahoo.com if you’re interested, and she’ll send you details of where to meet.

OUR MAIN TOUR STARTS AT 10 AM (no need to RSVP) All times are approximate.
10:00 am
Meet up at Albany Community Center parking lot, 1249 Marin Avenue, Albany.
Travel via Ohlone Greenway to

10:15 am
Gilman Street, Berkeley: first stop, Jim & Eva Wert’s certified Bay-Friendly garden and tiny back yard with cooped chickens, fruit trees and intensive year-round vegetables.

10:45 am
Travel via Acton and Virginia to

11:10 am
Bancroft Way, Berkeley, near San Pablo Ave: Jim Montgomery’s Green Faerie Farm, a sustainable urban mini farm with fruit trees, veggies, goats, chickens, bees, and rabbits. See a short video about Jim at http://www.ediblecitymovie.com/donate/

12:00 pm
Option A: travel via Ninth and University Village to Madison Street, Albany, then to B, or
Option B: travel via Ninth and Virginia directly to Cornell Street, Berkeley

12:20 pm
A: Madison Street, Albany: see Catherine and Leonard’s tiny but productive Albany yard with rainwater dispersal and greywater features, fruit trees, flowers and vegetables and a cob chicken house in the making, then continue to
B: Cornell, Berkeley: Susan Silber’s new permaculture-style Berkeley garden with raised beds, where there is room for us to have lunch and pick plums from her tree.

1:30 pm
Travel via Dartmouth and Ohlone Greenway to

1:45 pm

Peralta and Hopkins, Berkeley: tour the Eco House (a permaculture garden with rainwater catchment features, a banana tree growing in greywater, ducks, and a whole lot more.

2:30 pm
Make your own way home.

Is your yard kind of overgrown, neglected or unsatisfying? Not really what you’d like to look at out the window? Perhaps it’s your physical condition that prevents you from getting out there or perhaps you believe you have a brown thumb. You might have a vague feeling for you what you want, a detailed plan, or no idea at all.

On the other hand, you might be an avid gardener struggling to satisfy your passion with a container garden or in a tiny space with inadequate sunlight. Or perhaps you’ve done as much as you can in your own yard and you’re itching to transform another patch of ground.

Whichever person you are, think about this: as cheap oil gets scarcer, so will cheap food, given that the average item on the US plate has traveled 1,500 miles to get there. Consensus among geologists has it that we’ll reach a Global Peak in oil production somewhere between 2008 and 2012, and, because it’s hard to tell until after you’ve got there, we may be at that point already. (Why are the oil giants now drilling for oil several miles under the seabed, for instance? The days of striking oil just beneath the surface and abundant “gushers” are long gone, and we’re reduced to risky operations like the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. As this environmental disaster develops, my own oil “habit” is coming under severe scrutiny.)

So, if food starts getting too expensive at the store, let’s learn to grow our own! Small mixed vegetable plots – with flowers for the pollinators – are more productive than large commercial fields by a large margin, and we can grow exactly what we like and only have to walk out into the yard to get it. How about that for reducing your carbon footprint!

Hyperlocavore

Albany now has its own garden sharing website on the new Hyperlocavore social network. Sign up, then find someone or some few who can work your plot and transform it into a beautiful haven – where you can sit and enjoy the peace of a well-nurtured garden, serviced by the bees and butterflies – while providing you both with delicious produce.

Throwing a gardening party is the best of all. Neighbors donate their good hard work in the morning (tear up that front lawn and put in beds?), then share a potluck meal and camaraderie afterwards.

Albany Food Map

Put yourself on the map! This google map was started to visually track all of the abundant food growing or growing potential. Use the color key to navigate the dots, and place your own gardens or available garden space. To add a dot, you have to log into a google account.

City Garden Swap

If we have too many carrots, peas, potatoes, onions, beans, beets, turnips, leafy greens, lettuce, radishes, plums, apples, pears, lemons, kiwis, oranges  …  we can give them to our neighbors or trade them at the Albany Garden Swap Garden Swap (Tuesday nights 6:30 pm at the Albany Community Center, May through October). What a lovely community event that is! Here’s a description from Eva Wise:

“On Tuesday we arrived at Marin Ave. and Masonic a little before 6:30 pm bearing a basket full of our latest extra garden yield–potatoes, some herbs and parsley tied in small bunches, sorrel. But the sign I’d seen earlier was gone and there was no-one else in sight. Too good to be true, I thought. But as we returned to our car I saw someone setting up an awning and table next to the Ohlone Path across from the library – promising! We grabbed our basket and walked over. In a few minutes others arrived bearing baskets and bags of food–Meyer lemons, giant cauliflowers, salad greens, pea pods, bunches of herbs. I immediately eyed the cauliflowers. Our yellow Yukon potatoes, the only ones there, were instant eyecatchers. Now the table, surrounded by a dozen eager gardeners, was full of fresh vegies. The bartering was hot and heavy. How about two big potatoes for a bunch of snow peas? I scored one-quarter of the giant cauliflower; it made two meals for us.

“The swap lasted only 30 minutes or so. At some point I looked around at the bright, animated faces of the gardeners; a 10-year old girl giving away lemons from her tree without even wanting an exchange. It turned out that the library sign had been stolen, but this hadn’t stopped the gardeners. We are already planning our next barter basket for this coming Tuesday. IMPORTANT: get there a few minutes early; the bartering begins promptly at 6:30. As the summer wears on there may be more gardeners and more food, with bartering harkening back to earlier times when money was not part of the experience of acquiring food. It’s a great way to meet your neighbor gardeners. Or to get encouragement to start your own garden!”

In today’s paper (Contra Costa Times Morning Report, Saturday June 12, Bay Area News Group) there’s an article that spells out the extent to which the American lifestyle depends upon petroleum products and all those petroleum derivatives. I couldn’t find the article online but it’s called, “So mad at BP you’ll give up on oil? Good luck with that.” Hooray for truth in the mainstream media!

And here’s the scoop on the true cost of all that oil, in an Alternative Annual Report (PDF) just published on Chevron’s activities that covers the fallout in all the places round the world.

Chevron’s spending last year on alternative energy technologies was at its lowest since 2006, and the amount spent on lobbying in 2009 was higher than at any time in the company’s history.

Of course we know that it’s time to start seriously investigating and using alternatives when it comes to transportation and energy. But what about alternatives to plastic?

Transition Albany would like to host an event that features alternatives to plastics and other petroleum-derived substances in everything from kitchenware to personal products to hardware. Please send ideas and useful contacts to transitionalbanyca@gmail.com or the Transition Albany Yahoo Group. Thank you!
Bamboo and industrial hemp come to mind. And here’s a link to start the ball rolling.

Free Energy Efficiency and Solar Advice Offered in Albany

Starting now, SmartSolar offers its free services to Albany residents!

Are you interested in making your home more energy efficient and self-sufficient? Would you like more information about solar technologies before talking to a contractor?

Lose a ton of carbon!

Free classes for Albany residents start on May 6th!

“ I love helping people discover their emissions/energy impact and take simple steps toward living more sustainably. Doing this in small groups is fun and empowering. It’s really like opening a door to a new way of living. Taken collectively, these personal and household actions will have a big impact on our U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. My own family has been able to cut our emissions in half and we are saving a lot of money too!

~ Linda Currie, Instructor

For more information, contact Linda Currie

510-851-2552  |   Lcurriedesign@aol.com