Category Archives: Green
Urban farmer Willow Rosenthal plants seeds in Berkeley
The aptly named Willow Rosenthal grew up around trees in Sonoma County in a community that farmed its own food. Raised by hippies who didn’t have a lot of money, she nonetheless ate well. She also learned how to grow her own food by working on an organic farm and for a local nursery.
She came to the Bay Area in 1997 knowing she wanted to do social-justice work; an internship with Food First and volunteering with the Organic Consumers Association followed.
When she moved to West Oakland, Rosenthal was immediately struck by the absence of greenery, how much vacant, unused land there was, and the lack of grocery stores. She had landed in a community bounded by three major freeways that is also home to a busy port and extensive industrial pollution. People in this predominantly low-income, African American and Latino neighborhood had nowhere close by to buy healthy, affordable food. The area had plenty of corner liquor stores and fast-food joints, but not a single full-service supermarket. … Continue reading »
Film about father of conservation to be shown in Berkeley
When the famed conservationist Aldo Leopold was a young ranger in the early part of the 20th century, he and some friends came upon a pack of wolves crossing a river. It was an era when killing wildlife was routine, and the group whipped out their shotguns and sent a fusillade of bullets at the wolves.
When Leopold climbed down the craggy cliff to claim his trophy, he watched a “fierce green fire” dying in the wolf’s eyes.
“I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain,” Leopold would later write in his landmark 1948 book Sand Country Almanac. “I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.” … Continue reading »
Jam maker turns hobby into thriving local business
Dafna Kory discovered the delights of jalapeňo jam during pre-dinner nibbles at a Thanksgiving gathering. She went out to buy a jar, couldn’t find the mighty spicy condiment anywhere, so she began experimenting with making her own. It became an instant hit among her posse.
At first, the self-taught preserver thought her D.I.Y. hobby would just make nice gifts for friends and family. The she moved from San Francisco to South Berkeley, saw the abundance of plums, apples, and lemons growing in her new backyard, and a jamming business was born.
Kory foraged fruit in a hyper-local fashion. She made batches of jam in her home kitchen. She personally delivered by bike. Demand for her jams grew by word-of-mouth.
Friends who had friends who owned stores began encouraging her to branch out beyond her inner circle. So she started shopping INNA jam (the name is, indeed, a playful pun) to places like Local 123, Summer Kitchen, Rick and Ann’s Restaurant and The Gardener.
About a year ago, with orders coming in a steady stream, it became clear that Kory, now 28, needed to either gear up and focus on turning her after-hours pastime into a fully fledged business or scale back and remain a hobbyist. She decided to take the plunge.
A freelance commercial video editor, Kory hasn’t looked back. She began working in a commercial kitchen in North Berkeley, selling her pickles and preserves at events like ForageSF’s Underground Market and the Eat Real Festival, and offering workshops for other D.I.Y.ers.
The UC Berkeley graduate now spends nine months of the year working full-time on her budding food business, and supplements her income in the winter months with editing gigs.
In a year, she hopes to devote 100% of her work day to INNA jam. Kory also pickles though that product line is on hiatus while she ratchets up production to meet demand for her increasingly popular jams. She delivers locally by bike, ships interstate, and offers an annual, seasonal subscription (a 10-ounce jar retails for $12). … Continue reading »
Joy Moore: community food reformer
Retired City of Berkeley health outreach worker Joy Moore, 59, is anything but retired.
A long-time local food activist, Moore has played a key role in community efforts to reform school lunch in the Berkeley Unified School District, co-founded Farm Fresh Choice, which brings quality, affordable produce to people of lesser means, and was a member of the Berkeley Food Policy Council, a coalition of community and city groups founded in 1999 to increase community food access and improve health for all the city’s residents.
One of the council’s projects: Farm Fresh Choice, which provides local, sustainable fruits and vegetables to residents in West and South Berkeley neighborhoods who may have economic, transportation, or cultural obstacles that prevent them from, say, shopping at Berkeley Bowl or frequenting the regular Berkeley Farmers’ Markets. The Ecology Center serves as fiscal sponsor for both farmers’ market options.
Nowadays, Moore can be found tending the school garden, talking up healthy eating, and serving fruit smoothies and sauteed greens at the other high school in town Berkeley Technology Academy (B-Tech), designed for students who struggle to succeed at Berkeley High. She also runs an after-school cooking program at the school her grandson attends, Claremont Middle School in Oakland. … Continue reading »
After Berkeley, school lunches will never be the same
When Helen De Michiel was shooting Lunch Love Community, a series of short films focused on Berkeley’s groundbreaking school lunch program, she would often interrupt her desk work to drop in to King Middle School to see what was on the menu for lunch.
Sharing the food with the school kids, chatting with the cooks and watching the care taken by the servers, dishwashers and cleaners all translated into material for the documentary, the making of which she also documented on her Notes from the Field blog.
In one entry, De Michiel, co-director and co-producer of Lunch Love Community with Sophie Constantinou, writes: “The school lunch cooks are planting seeds for future memories. At some point later in their lives, the kids who have gone through these lunch lines will remember the fine smell of delicately seasoned pinto beans, the crunch of the fresh Mexican slaw, and the ceiling light in the Commons rooms, and that moment when they were twelve years old and peeling a perfect Clementine orange to taste. This is how we make change on a daily level, one plate at a time.” … Continue reading »
Councilmember concerned about seafood sustainability
Following our January 26 story about the difficulties many restaurants and suppliers face sourcing sustainable seafood, Anthony Sanchez, chief of staff for Berkeley city Councilmember Jesse Arreguín, wrote in to remind us that this issue has been discussed at the local government level.
“Sustainable seafood is a serious environmental issue that has luckily been brought to the public’s attention by organizations like the Monterey Bay Aquarium and good reporting,” he writes. “Also, the Berkeley City Council is interested … Continue reading »
Redford Center to close its Berkeley office
The Redford Center, an organization started by the actor Robert Redford and his three children to foster discussion about social change, will shutter its Berkeley offices in February.
Lee Bycel, the center’s director, revealed the news last week via an email sent to supporters.
“I am writing to update you on some important developments with the Redford Center,” wrote Bycel. “After careful evaluation, the Redford family has decided to centralize Redford Center activity out of the Sundance Village … Continue reading »
UC Berkeley is named the world’s greenest university
UC Berkeley has emerged as the greenest campus in the world, according to a study conducted by the University of Indonesia (UI) published in the International Business Times.
Cal’s 2010 Campus Sustainability report highlights some of the university’s green achievements. In 2009, campus greenhouse gas emissions were down by 4.5% — their lowest levels since 2005. Total campus water usage (not including residence halls) has dropped by almost 20% since 1990. And the promotion of tap water as … Continue reading »
Garden teacher Kim Allen offers youth space to grow
For four years Kim Allen has served as garden program manager for Berkeley Youth Alternatives (BYA), which provides a minimum-wage, internship program for socio-economically challenged adolescents ages 14 to 18. Some come to the garden through word-of-mouth from family or friends, others as part of mandated community service.
During the school year Allen’s youth garden crew, typically a group of six to eight, work and learn alongside her in two community garden plots in West Berkeley. There’s the half-acre Bancroft Community Garden, which the BYA shares with two dozen community gardeners on Bancroft Way, and the smaller Community Orchard garden on land the nonprofit owns on Bonar Street. The fruit tree garden includes many heirloom varieties, donated by Trees of Antiquity – among them citrus, apples, and pluots. The Bancroft Garden boasts typical farmers’ market fare.
In the summer, BYA offers an eight-week program for a dozen youth, who put in about 20 hours a week. The organization runs a small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) during peak harvest season. It sells flowers and whatever is in abundance in the garden to Bill Briscoe, who owns The Bread Workshop. Briscoe puts surplus fava beans, sunchokes, garlic, and other vegetables to good use in his in-house soups. BYA youth harvest about two to four boxes of produce a week for The Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice program, which serves low-income residents. Every other week the garden provides perishables for a local food bank pick-up point. … Continue reading »
The Berkeley Wire: 1.3.11
Albany and Berkeley can’t agree on banners for Solano Avenue [Albany Patch]
Kay Kerr, co-founder of Save the Bay, dies [SF Chronicle]
North German restaurant and bakery to open on San Pablo [SF Weekly]
Demanding lives: Cal students pursue sports and engineering [Berkeley Engineering]
Cartoonist Neil Gaiman and singer Amanda Palmer wed at Chabon/Waldman house [Bleeding Cool]
Photo: Mastheads at the Berkeley Marina by E>mar/Flickr.
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