Marianne Butler

Councilwoman, District 15
Louisville Metro Council

Earth Day Perspective

While I am only a backyard gardener growing few vegetables, I do share those vegetables with neighbors and co-workers. Growing your own vegetables not only gives you fresh vegetables it is also environmentally correct. Watching the faces of young people as they help you cultivate, weed and nurture the plants to maturity is rewarding as well. My niece takes great pride in knowing that she can grow her own tomatoes and she is only 8!

Whenever possible, I stop at local farmers markets to get the freshest, locally grown vegetables and fruits. I also look for Kentucky Grown products in the grocery stores. It only makes sense that to get the freshest product; it should be grown close to the marketplace leaving a smaller carbon footprint.

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Paul Cappiello, Ph.D.

Executive Director
Yew Dell Gardens
Crestwood, KY

Saving the Planet....One Pause at a Time

As I sit at my desk writing, looking out the window for signs of Persephone’s triumphant return, I am reminded that it is again that time of year when something special is in the air. As Earth Day approaches, it is not the return of songbird songs or forest floor ephemerals that fills the proverbial air. No, during this emergent season, the most notable waft in the spring air is that of hyperbole.

Spring, for many, marks an annual rite of rededication to the earth, to sustainable lifestyles, to simply smelling the roses. Unfortunately, many of us find ourselves so caught up in the moment that we are swept into making grand, and ultimately, unsustainable exclamations. Like January exercise equipment sales, spring proclamations of large-scale globe-saving initiatives often fall quickly before the phalanx of life’s everyday chores. In garden lingo, the path to the compost pile is paved with good intentions!

So this year, my challenge to all will be to aim low; to aim so low, in fact that the result is nothing more than the simplest, most fleeting of moments, a simple moment of wonder.

At Yew Dell Gardens, our mission is one of education, mostly garden education. And we use the garden to connect with people where ever they happen to be in their lives. School kids planting peas, homeowners planting a tree, designers in search of new approaches, and nurseries in constant need of new and better plants; this is our broad audience. And in all my years as a gardener, an educator, a scientist and a parent, one of the most lasting lessons I have learned about affecting change is that wonder, simple wonder, is the key to our most meaningful moments. It is that simple and complex bit of wonder that we strive to cultivate through Yew Dell’s gardens and programs.

Years ago, I had a group of 3^rd graders at Yew Dell for a field trip. As our program began, one of the kids paused mid-sentence, and noticed that the fieldstone used to build Yew Dell’s stone castle, were filled with fossils. And within an instant, the entire group was standing, mesmerized, absorbing the fact that not only were there, recognizable in those stones, images of 300-million-year-old organisms, but the substrate in which they were displayed, was actually formed by deposits from shells of the same group of species. The good old Devonian limestone caught their attention and in an instant, there was wonder.

While I eventually got to my planned lesson, I am quite confident that none of my plant stories came close to, nor will they ever catch up with the simple, complex and magical lesson of wonder. And with that wonder in place, there are simply no limits on the future. So on this Earth Day, go out and wander, and wonder.

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Environmental Coordinator
Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District

Earth Day Perspective

Over 200 years ago, the industrial revolution began transforming our society from agrarian to industrial. As the number of factories grew, scores of people left their agricultural lifestyles behind and migrated in to cities to find work. At the same time, advances in farm technology and transportation allowed farmers to produce larger harvests and to ship their goods around the world. This system of food production and distribution detached us from agriculture and changed the way we relate to our food. It also has had negative impacts on our planet.

One of the negative results of this system is the distance food must travel to reach us. Longer distances require more fuel use for transportation resulting in more air pollution. Trucks, trains, boats, and planes all use large quantities of fossil fuels to transport good and create harmful emissions in the process. Some estimate that food in the U.S. travels an average of 1,500 miles from its source to the market. As a result, global climate change and air quality are significantly impacted by what we choose to eat.

The loss of local revenue when produce is purchased from nonlocal sources presents another problem. Purchasing produce from nonlocal sources exports wealth out of our local economy. In our region many farms are sold for residential development because their ability to generate income has been reduced over time. This contributes to soil erosion, water degradation, habitat reduction, and urban sprawl – the result of which is increased vehicle travel, contributing to air pollution and global climate change.

Efforts to reconnect people with food production are showing up throughout our community and I am encouraged this Earth Day to see the culture of local food flourishing. A major step toward reconnecting residents with local food is Louisville Metro Government’s creation of plan to network local farms with markets. This plan provides the framework for a steady supply of locally grown products into local retail establishments. The University of Kentucky’s Cooperative Extension Office is managing ten community gardens across the city. These gardens provide people with a place to grown their own food and share gardening knowledge. Last spring, Clifton residents organized independently and transformed a vacant lot into a community asset with fifteen raised beds and a greenhouse anyone can visit. They even had a neighborhood harvest festival last fall.

At the Air Pollution Control District (APCD), we promote growing more and mowing less as a strategy to reduce harmful air pollution from gas powered lawn equipment. Our Lawn Care for Cleaner Air program recognizes residents that have taken steps to reduce their turf grass with other types of vegetation. This can easily be accomplished by planting vegetable gardens. Contact our office if you or someone you know would like recognition for your efforts. As we say at APCD, “It all adds up to cleaner air!”

Happy Earth Day!

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Phyllis Croce

Landscape Restoration Specialist
Metropolitan Sewer District

Earth Day Perspective

My mother’s family migrated from Minnesota to Idaho during the first decade of the 20^th Century. Forty years later, my first cousins grew up surrounded by agriculture fields, orchards, and dairy farms in southwest Idaho. As children, they were involved in 4-H and raised vegetables, milk cows, sheep, chickens to show at the Annual State Fair. In the summer when we went to visit them, my cousins, mother, grandmother and aunties would join other local women at the cannery and “put food by." We headed back to New Jersey from Idaho with the trunk of our 1950 Hudson Pacemaker weighed down with cans of asparagus, Bing cherries, beets, peaches, tomatoes.

Grow anything and you are guaranteed to learn something. Last summer we grew two tomato plants in front of the gooseberry bushes in our tiny front yard. (It’s the only space that gets enough sun. The back and side yards are shady because of all the trees.) Our “surrogate” grandchildren, Zoe (6 years old) and Vivian (3 years old), often drop by, riding in the trailer behind one of their parents’ bikes. We have tea parties on the front porch.

Sometimes they bring snacks of nuts and raisins. If they are lucky enough to come on the day we have picked up our Community Subscription Farm (CSF) vegetables, there might be radishes, carrots or strawberries to go along with the lemonade cranberry juice “tea."

Zoe and Vivian tell me they do not like tomatoes. We watch them ripen over the course of several tea parties and last September, they picked the first red ones. “Now what shall we do?” I asked with my exaggerated British accent, which always gets a laugh. Maybe you can guess what ensued. We cubed those tomatoes, chopped up cilantro, and added a little garlic and even some onion into the bowl. Then we fired up the music, opened up the windows and danced around the porch with our pepper slices full of the fresh salsa.

Last weekend we pumped up our bike tires and all rode over to Anne and Steve’s. This summer, we are going to try an extended-group community vegetable garden, and between the three couples, Anne and Steve are the only friends with enough sun to grow vegetables.  My husband and I don’t have children of our own but now there are 3 generations of folks working on this garden. With the exception of Zoe and Vivian, all of us draw from decades of gardening memories and knowledge as we develop the list of vegetables and flowers we want to plant. Now it feels like we’re also growing a family along with the basil.

As we anticipate the next half year, I am mindful of those unexpected intangible and sometimes hidden gifts that show up when gardening with others. Getting ready to bike back to our respective homes, as we strapped on our helmets, Zoe reminded us about the benefits of worms. Vivian dragged her baby doll around by one foot singing about sweet peas and beans.

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Sarah Lynn Cunningham

Director
Louisville Climate Action Network

Fewer Food Miles on Your Plate

How many miles did the food on your plate travel to get there? Let’s do the math.

A typical breakfast might include orange juice from Florida (1,000 mi) or coffee from Costa Rica (1,900 mi), strawberries from California (2,000 mi) or bananas from Honduras (1,600 mi), cereal from wheat grown in Kansas (750 mi) and milk from Kentucky (100 mi).

Lunch might consist of bread from wheat grown in Kansas (750 mi), peanut butter from Georgia (400 mi), jelly from Ohio (250 mi), milk from Kentucky (100 mi) and an apple from Washington State (1,800 mi).

And supper might be chicken (50 mi), broccoli from California (2,300 mi), potatoes from Idaho (1,600 mi), pasta from wheat grown in Kansas (750 mi), upside-down cake, including pineapple from Hawaii (4,400 mi) and water.

When food travels such great distances, more than freshness and nutrients are lost. We sacrifice air quality and public health, too. All those trucks, trains, planes and ships transporting food from farm to table burn fossil fuels.  (If the food requires refrigeration along the way, more fossil fuels are burned.) Engines and motors emit pollution into our air—risking asthma and heart attacks, and contributing to global climate change.

Gardening eliminates food miles altogether. Many of us can grow a backyard garden, while some may only have room to raise a few tomato plants in pots on a patio or porch, or herbs in a sunny window.  Renting plots in community gardens is another option. Students and teachers can create school gardens.

Still, we can’t grow all of our own food. But we can use the following approaches to reducing food-miles:

Buying at Farmers’ Markets

During the growing season, area farmers offer fresh vegetables, fruit, honey, eggs, meat, cheese and even flowers. Most operate from March through fall. A few markets offer products such as meat, eggs, cheese and honey all year. New locations are sprouting up every year; find the one closest to you at http://www.kyagr.com/marketing/farmmarket/directory.htm

Shopping for Local Products at the Grocery Store

By reading labels, you can choose products made closer to home. Area grocers are increasingly stocking food and beverages produced locally, many marked by this logo.

Shifting Food Choices

Sure, buying more locally produced food requires that we better sync our food choices with the seasons. You won’t eat fresh asparagus year-round, but you’ll really enjoy its freshness when it was just cut that spring morning. And while you can never buy locally grown bananas, you can substitute locally grown strawberries when they’re in season.

Louisville CAN hopes that grown-ups will introduce young people to gardening at school or home, farmers’ markets and reading labels.

(Psst! Why not slip in lessons in map-reading and math? Show them how to compute the distances that different foods traveled!)

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