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| Alabama Sierra Club Sustainable Agriculture
Task Force Member Katherine Klose serves blueberries to participants
in the Blueberry
Bonanza/Local Foods public meeting on August 2 in Tuscaloosa
Alabama. |
In the spring, the BEC Tuscaloosa Sustainable Ag Task Force sponsored
several salad parties in the community. While folks ate their salads,
volunteers had one-on-one conversations with them about how good
the locally
grown salads were and about our local foods campaign. They were
also given
the opportunity to sign volunteer cards.
The salad parties were very popular - and successful in recruiting
new
volunteers.
Our new volunteers joined forces with our experienced
volunteers to sponsor
a Blueberry Bonanza/public meeting. The focus of the meeting was "Where
Your Food Comes From. . . Matters." After many hours spent
in organizing
for the event, volunteers blanketed the town with posters and flyers
(some
volunteers going door-to-door), spoke to community leaders, sent
letters to
local restaurant and grocery owners, and placed ads in the local
paper. A
highlight of the organizing came with the Sunday afternoon blueberry
pick.
Ten volunteers went to the local CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture
farm)
and piced 14 gallons of blueberries for the Aug. 2 event.
Then these very creative volunteers went home and cooked creative
delicacies
with the blueberries.
The public meeting was a tremendous success
- with 65 community members in
attendance. The event began with a Blueberry Bonanza where participants
were served fresh blueberries over ice cream made at a local dairy
- as well
as the different blueberry dishes prepared by the volunteers. There
were
many blueberry taste treats - such as blueberry cheesecake, blueberry
muffins, blueberry cobbler, blueberry tarts, blueberry pudding,
homemade
yogurt with blueberries, and blueberry spritzers.
Following the Blueberry
Bonanza, Dr. Mary Hendrickson, or Food Circles
Network, gave a presentation on "How Your Food Is Produced
. . . Matters".
Her presentation began with why consumers should eat locally -
then
concluded with actions communities could take in forming local
food systems.
Dr. Hendrickson took the old quote "You are what you eat" to
a further
dimension: "You and what you eat are the landscape that surrounds
your
community." If we choose to eat industrially grown foods,
then our
landscapes will consist of polluting factory farms. If we eat locally,
then
we influence the number of family farms that surround our communities.
Following
a very active discussion/question and answer time, many participants
received door prizes - consisting of baskets of vegetables
donated by the Tuscaloosa Farmers Market and gallon bags of blueberries.
At
the conclusion of the meeting, participants were given the opportunity
to
join the Local Foods coalition.
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Photo: Families and farmers alike enjoyed a recent Sierra Club Farm Day in Alabama.
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