Filed under: Food + Health, Local Events + Action, Nature + Travel | Tags: children, fortune, Home Garden, inheritance, KCCUA, legacy, summer
Farmers pass on more to their children than their name. They pass on their cultural legacy, in the form of agricultural tradition. Their greatest fortune is the soil they cultivate.
By helping their children till this soil and plant seeds, farmers pass along the tips and tricks that their ancestors had left to them. Years later, their children inherit the land, add their own innovations, and pass them on to their children.
Try to remember when your land was this important to you. It was your cultural legacy, your unique perspective on life, and your fortune. It was the age of the family farm, in the truest sense of the term.
Now, we live in the age of the factory farm. Our food is abundant but obscure. Our land is simply a site for a house, a tree or two, and a manicured lawn. The convenience of the corner grocery store has killed our need to produce our own food.
Despite having to plant their roots in a new country, immigrant farmers Pov (pronounced Paul) Huns and Aye Aye Nu used their farms to reconnect with their heritage.
Pov, originally from Laos, farms untraditionally. “It’s common American practice to keep weeds out, and I’m the one that says keep the weeds in,” he said. And Aye Aye, from Thailand, grows chaibong, a Burmese sorrel that usually can’t be found in the U.S., at her Kansas City, Kan., farm. She has driven as far as Omaha to sell her crop to fellow immigrants.
Follow their example! Help your children start a garden this summer. Dig a plot near your house, plant some seeds, and water and weed every now and then. Spray each other your hose! Get muddy! Get some dirt in your fingernails! You’ll keep cool, and your kids won’t forget it.
-By Justin Leverett, Group 2
Filed under: Energy + Climate, Food + Health, Local Events + Action, Nature + Travel, Society + Media | Tags: KCCUA, local food, medicinal foods, natural health, organic foods
Most people know bananas can corral Charlie horses. Some figure carrots help eyesight. And we know eating oranges keeps you from coming down with scurvy.
But what if our food could go beyond fixing our hiccups? What if, instead of filling prescriptions and taking a conga line of pills, we could find natural remedies right there in our fruits and veggies?
Turns out, we can.
People started using herbs and produce as medicine more than 5,000 years ago. Although food has changed a lot in that time – with the advent of pesticides, herbicides, additives and artificial flavoring – food still contains nutrients that can tame the common cold and keep your blood sugar low – you just have to know what to look for.
For the most part, foods with the highest nutrients, and therefore more medicinal, are the foods grown organically and, preferably, local.
“Conventional vegetables that are brought in tend to lose essential nutrients before they are bought,” said Pov (pronounced Paul) Huns. He used spinach as an example, saying spinach loses essential nutrients when it hasn’t been consumed in at least a week.
Pov is an urba
n farmer in Kansas City, Kan., and grows more than 40 vegetables on his 4-acre farm. He started his farm, not for the tax write-offs or the sales income, but for the health benefits of naturally grown, local food.
Try Pov’s ginger or epazote for your irritable-bowel syndrome.
Menstrual cramps? Put down the Midol and have some bitter eggplant.
Got high cholesterol, high blood pressure and/or high blood sugar? Pov’s bitter melons might help. New research has found that this fruit may be an alternative medicine for HIV.
Can’t beat your cold? Have some organic, locally harvested lemongrass tea.
And if you’re not satisfied with your allergy pills, try his pak choy. The blooms are supposed to help with the itching and sneezing.
But Pov isn’t the only local contributor to the medicinal food movement.
Kansas City also has a few resident-beekeepers. The honey from their well-kept bees have many medicinal purposes: preventing seasonal allergies, treating cuts and burns, upping your energy, providing natural vitamins and antioxidants, helping you lose weight.
It’s incredible to think that food has the power not only to sustain us, but to keep us alive and healthy too. That health care doesn’t have to come from a bottle, but can come from a vine out of the earth or the honey of a bee.
That the food we take so much for granted could help free us from the prescription-world we live in and release us into a world where food, grown as it should be, where it should be, provides us with all the nutrients and medicine we need.
By Group 2: Matt Bristow, Justin Leverett, Aly Van Dyke and Tina Wood
Thanks to Botanical Research Center, Gourmet Sleuth, Alumni Roundup, Food Subs and Alibaba, to for the pictures
Thanks to You Tube for the video.
Filed under: Food + Health, Local Events + Action, Society + Media | Tags: Aye Aye Nu, Catholic Charities, Conservation, FDR, food miles, food security, food shortages, Group 2, overpopulation, Pov Huns, reconnect, Sherri Harvel, sustainabi, sustainability, urban farm, victory gardens, WWII
Reconnect with the Land…
My grandparents were in their 20s when FDR asked them and the rest of the nation to pick up the food slack through Victory Gardens. WWII had started, and while our troops received the fruits of our commercial farms, my grandparents and their peers were at home, learning the ways of self-sustainability and conservation as they went. Ordinary citizens reconnected with the land and filled every city green space with gardens. They were the first generation of urban farmers in this country and the project was a major success.
Today, half of the world lives in urban areas. We are relying more than ever on the rural half to produce the majority of food for not just those in the cities but for themselves also. We have some of our food shipped thousands of miles to reach our plates, when a wide variety of that food can be grown only feet from our back porch. As our society continues to grow, we will have to find new ways of feeding the planet. Overpopulation is inevitable and this will lead to food shortages unless we, as individuals, change how we interact with the land that grows our food.
Urban farms are once again starting to sprout up across the country. Citizens like Sherri Harvel, are reclaiming vacant lots and turning them into lush farms. Aye Aye Nu is reconnecting with her Burmese heritage by farming the land with Catholic Charities, in Kansas City, Kansas. Pov Huns is continuing his personal relationship with the earth, by giving back what he takes from it. They are all waging this new war. It is a battle for food security, where victory is a thriving environment for all of us and a better relationship with the land. These farmers have taken positions on the front line and now it’s our turn to join the fight.
Eating food comes naturally, so should growing it. By reconnecting with the land, we will have a greater understanding of what it takes to produce what we eat. It is a culture change, away from fast foods and frozen dinners, to give us a fresh start, where we respect our food and the land it is grown on. In return, the food will nourish us.
-Matt Bristow / Group 2
Photo by Matt Bristow / Video by Group 2 courtesy of youtube
Filed under: Energy + Climate, Food + Health, Nature + Travel, Society + Media | Tags: organic, local food, environment, Community, natural, KCCUA, tree hugger, 1, 500 miles, monocultures
In my first grade class, we were asked to make a poster of what we would wish for if we were granted three wishes. My list didn’t include ponies or mansions, but this: 1) I wish people would stop polluting the oceans. 2) I wish people would stop hunting animals for their fur. 3) I wish I had 10 more wishes.
The well being of the environment is something that has been on my mind since the beginning. But it goes beyond recycling and turning of lights– the food decisions we make every day have a tremendous impact on the environment, as well.
Source: New York Entertainment
It is said that your food travels an average of 1,500 miles from the farm to get to your plate. Monocultures of the big agricultural corporations and the heavy use of chemicals have made food, the most natural thing in the world, into something wholly unnatural– but it doesn’t have to be like that. With the popularity of urban farming booming in the Kansas City area, it’s not necessary to use so much transportation fuel and unnatural means to get your food. You can get organically grown, top-notch quality food from right around the corner. Not only will you support your community farmers, but your footprint on the environment can dramatically shrink.
Most of the bright, shiny, perfectly shaped food you see in the grocery store has been packed with pesticides and chemicals to get it to look its best. This may seem like the normal way to eat food today, but it can really be so much simpler, healthier, environmentally friendlier and meaningful if you dig deep and get back to your roots.
-Amanda Thompson, group 3.
Filed under: Food + Health, Local Events + Action, Society + Media | Tags: Drumm Farm, farms, Kansas, kids
Victory gardens are going back in style, and it’s children who are gaining from their revival.
“I show the kids — here’s a beet, here’s how you pick it, here’s what it tastes like,” says Maureen Branstetter, farmer at Drumm Farm.
Drumm Farm in Independence, Mo., now has baby chickens, much to the children's delight.
Being from Kansas, I always took for granted how farms were the default backdrop to the tiny towns I grew up in or around. But through the time I’ve spent at Drumm Farm over the past few weeks, I’ve seen and met with kids who regularly work in the garden, declare their love for okra and talk about how the farmers give them fresh produce for dinner.
The farmers at Drumm Farm work directly with kids, such as Sam, who is 17 and lives on the farm. “More often than not,” Sam says, “Bruce brings us the fresh food and the fresh fruit.” He says working on a farm has taught him a lot of responsibility he doesn’t think he could get from other common jobs his peers have. And although Sam says working in agriculture isn’t his No. 1 career choice in the future, he “wouldn’t mind working on a farm.”
Stories like Sam’s are similar to stories of kids growing up during the time of the WWII-era victory gardens. “I have very fond memories of working with my mother on our victory garden as a young child,” E. McFann of Delaware says. “Our backyard was loaded [with produce] and then she also had a plot on a farm down the street. Our basement was loaded with canned vegetables and fruits.”
Maureen Branstetter recalls what seniors have been telling her about having grown their own garden in the past: “‘There’s nothing like it.’”
Raising kids on farms just seems to spur responsibility, interesting stories and a good diet. NPR has done a story on four kids growing up on an Iowa farm, and how their family waits until 10 p.m. to eat dinner so they can take advantage of every sun-filled hour. And even if a family can’t afford a farm or doesn’t have the time to maintain one, there are other resources to getting their children on a farm.
Even by growing up in Kansas, kids can be removed from the origin of their food and the taste of fresh produce. However, kids raised on or near farms can learn to appreciate food earlier than if they weren’t.
“They love picking radishes,” Maureen says about some kids who visit the farm. “They’re like, ‘Can we pick radishes? Can we pick radishes?’ And one kid would tell me, ‘Radishes are my favorite vegetable now.’”
— Jessica Sain-Baird
Group 1 blog post
Filed under: Food + Health, Society + Media | Tags: Blue Door Farm, eating healthy, Farmers, fresh food, health nut, industrial produce, KCCUA, local, mustard greens, organic, urban farming
Ok. So maybe health pine nut would be a more accurate description.
I’m not on the South Beach diet, I don’t train for marathons, nor do I eat protein shakes. But I do stay active, eat my veggies, and get a good night’s sleep what I can. For most of us average health pine nuts, food is not something to be feared or micromanaged as grams of sugar and carbs. It is a source of life, pleasure, and comfort. Of all the relationships in our life, food is perhaps the most intimate. After all, what we eat is converted into the building blocks of who we are.
It is easy to forget that most of the industrial produce we consume contain traces of pesticides and chemical fertilizers and is shipped in from thousands of miles away. The idea that the food on my plate was sprayed by men in chemical resistant gear and picked before ripeness in order to survive the hours of transport makes me seek alternatives.
The urban farmers and gardeners of Kansas City provide local, organic food–precisely the alternatives we need. Their crops are guaranteed fresh, oftentimes only picked the day before market. Farmers work bare-handed, feeling the rich soil between their fingers, unafraid that any chemicals or synthetics will harm them, their crops, or their customers.
When visiting Blue Door Farm, farmer Laura Christensen picked a piece of mustard green for me to try. I hesitated, accustomed to washing and rewashing my salad greens before eating them. She simply popped it into her mouth, savoring its tangy taste and freshness. I followed suit and was promptly and pleasantly surprised by its freshness and taste. Eating locally and organically is a way to take care of your body, and a delicious one at that.
Janie Chen, group 3
