• Sustainable Saturday Series kicks off February 7 with 2009 Program Leaders

The Sustainable Saturday Series at 21 Acres, beginning  February 7, 2009, presents an opportunity for the community to learn and participate in a variety of activities showcasing and demonstrating sustainable agriculture and environmental stewardship.  Beginning at 10 a.m., this is the first in the free series of Sustainable Saturdays, to be held the first Saturday of each month through November.

Farm and garden demonstrations and volunteer work projects are planned, along with an official Farm Tour at 11 a.m. Plans will be announced for 2009 programs and activities; visit with program leaders and hear about upcoming work in the 21 Acres Orchard, Apiary, Native Plant Garden, and Lucky and pals, our resident goats; participate in a farm chore; walk the trails; talk with a Community Gardener or meander through the wildlife corridor. Find out what’s growing in our community during your visit to 21 Acres. 

Farm Tours and the Sustainable Saturday series are free and open to the public. Read more

 Photo: A volunteer planting in the Back 18.

• 2009 Programs and Activities include:

• Sustainable Saturday series, first Saturdays of the month
• New Farm Education Program led by 21 Acres Education Director, Dave Muehleisen
• Continuing production and harvest on the 21 Acres Farm with Growing Washington
• Orchard planning and growth with the Seattle Tree Fruit Society
• A new food program on the 21 Acres Farm
• Rejuvenation of the 21 Acres Apiary with volunteer, Grant Carr
• 21 Acres Library
• Native Plant Garden and Trails
• Livestock program through the Sammamish Valley 4-H
• New youth summer Farm Camps
• The continuation of the 21 Acres capital campaign moving toward construction of the new agricultural building. 

• Our role in a changing environment - Building a Community Together in 2009

Continuing its mission to provide the community with resources to learn about where our food comes from and how locally grown food plays a crucial role in a sustainable lifestyle, 21 Acres offers a harvest of programs in the new year. Making a difference together, locally and globally through education, demonstration and hands-on training, 21 Acres' contributions to the changing climate will encourage every individual, every family, every business to embrace change and make informed decisions as we build a new economy.  

Author, Michael Pollan, addressed the changing climate recently in an interview with Yale Environment 360. Pollan was asked, “how does starting our own gardens as a means to combat climate change make a difference globally?”

Pollan replied: “I don’t know exactly what percentage of greenhouse gas we would reduce if everybody planted a garden, but it would be a percentage and it would be a help. If you go back to the victory garden moment in American history during World War II when the government strongly encouraged us all to plant gardens because we were reserving the output of our agricultural system for the troops and for starving Europeans – within a year or two, we actually got up to producing forty percent of our produce from home gardens. No food is more local, no food requires less fossil fuel, and no food is more tasty or nutritious than food you grow yourself. So it’s not a trivial contribution.”

Photo provided by Stezaker/Banker.

Pollan continues, “The process of growing your own food also teaches you things that are very, very important to combating this problem. One source of our sense of powerlessness and frustration around climate change, is that we are so accustomed to outsourcing so much of our lives to specialists of one kind or another, that the idea that we could reinvent the way we live, change our lifestyles, is absolutely daunting to people. We don’t know how to do it. We’ve lost the skills to do it. One of the things gardening teaches is that you can actually feed yourself. How amazing, you’re not dependent on a huge global system to feed yourself. I think where climate change is taking us, is to a point where many of us will need to take care of ourselves a little better than we do now. We will be less able to depend on distant experts and distant markets. We will need to re-localize economies all over the world because we won’t be able to waste fossil fuel, like having our salmon filleted in China before we bring it to the United States from Alaska. These long supply chains are going to have to get shorter.” Read more.

Join us Saturday, February 7, at 10 a.m. for Sustainable Saturday as we announce upcoming programs and activities planned for 2009.

• 21 Acres Develops New Advisory Committee

The 21 Acres Board of Directors is pleased to announce the development of their first Advisory Committee.  Selected leaders of the community who care deeply about 21 Acres’ mission of cultivating, demonstrating and advancing systems that support sustainable agriculture have come together to serve as ambassadors for the organization.

As 21 Acres moves toward expanding programs that promote this mission and get ready to break ground for the new 21 Acres Center for Local Food and Sustainable Living, important work needs to be done to position the organization to become a showcase in cutting-edge green building technologies, to demonstrate how the land, people and programs can teach and inspire us to interact in ecologically sensitive ways that will help to sustain small farms and share the many benefits of a locally grown food supply while educating people from throughout the region about their environment and about healthy food.

 The 21 Acres Advisory Committee is dedicated to bringing the 21 Acres strategic plan and growth to life while advocating and supporting the organization within the community as leaders who envision a more sustainable natural habitat for all to enjoy and benefit from.  The Board of Directors welcomes this special group of community leaders and thanks them for their vision and dedication to the 21 Acres mission and vision. 

Upcoming Events

• Tuesday, February 3, 6:30 p.m.- Solar Power in the Northwest, Environmental Outreach and Stewardship Alliance, Seattle. Read more

• Saturday, February 7, 10 a.m. - Noon - 21 Acres Sustainable Saturday, monthly series begins. Read more

• Friday/Saturday, March 6 & 7, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. - Conservation District Tree & Shrub Sale, Snohomish County/Monroe Fairgrounds. Read more

Time, Talent & Treasure

• Thank you to the 21 Acres Board of Directors and the newly created Advisory Board for their volunteer contributions in support of the organization’s mission and goals.

• A special thank you to all our donors who have contributed to the Capital Campaign. Donors this month include: William Appel and Linda Meredith; in spite of the upheaval in the markets world wide in the volatile month of January,  William and Linda have made a gift towards sustainable change.  Yes we can!

And, thank you to all contributors including our volunteers, interns, school groups and community groups. 2009 here we come! 

Food for Thought

Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We’re consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen-about 17 percent of our nation’s energy use-for agriculture, a close second to our vehicular use. Tractors, combines, harvesters, irrigation, sprayers, tillers, balers, and other equipment all use petroleum. More than a quarter of all farming energy goes into synthetic fertilizers. But getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth the total oil used for our food. The lion’s share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your plate. Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles.

If every U.S. Citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast.  From Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver