The Martin Luther King Neighborhood, Christ Church, and others partnered this year to launch a new urban community garden in downtown Lexington. Thanks to the patient, enlightened leadership of all the groups involved, and to the wonderful work of Seedleaf, Inc., we have had a beautiful start for this project.

I am learning how productive a garden can be late into the fall of the year. Here are photos I took three days ago.

[Show as slideshow]

Three examples this week of faith-based work in support of sustainable food systems wake me up to how quickly faith congregations can change habits and help save the earth. (Some wonderful educational institutions are already leading toward sustainability, as are a few corporations. I’m less sure about government bodies.)

A beloved niece, entering the second of two years as president of her synagogue, tells me persuading the congregation to install and use composting systems is high on her agenda for this year.

Second, from someone dear to a beloved son, I learn about successful efforts to set up a CSA (farm subscription) at a synagogue in Chicago. A short story in a newsletter (PDF, 241K) from the synagogue tells about cooking with the good food from the farm, and includes an inspired recipe for cucumbers on page 2.

Third, while on vacation this week I read Matthew Sleeth’s Serve God Save the Planet, a polestar book for many of my beloved neighbors, members of a Christian-based faith community that takes on the world’s toughest issues, including homelessness, hunger, and saving our literal earth, air, and water.

When institutions lead, lots of people get exposed to new habits and new satisfactions quickly. In the words of the excellent Bill McKibben: Step it up!

My fraternity — aka the National Peace Corps Association — is working for changes in the 2007 U.S. Farm Bill. One partner organization, Oxfam America, has developed a “Fairness in the Field” vision for the Farm Bill that includes these aims:

•Reduce funding for commodity subsidies that distort trade, and shift resources
to alternative investments in rural America.
•Shift taxpayer dollars to programs that help conserve land for future generations,
support a broad variety of farm products,and help poor and minority farmers.
• Shift taxpayer dollars to programs that can create markets for healthy foods in the
same regions where farmers live—in school cafeterias,farmers markets,local
grocery stores,hospitals,and nursing homes.
• Invest in roads,bridges,and broadband technology in rural America to generate
new jobs and strengthen small businesses.

Photo is of Sharon Stratton, Hoot Owl Holler Farm

Beautiful. New spring colors for Kentucky, possibly. But can this be a good thing? Is this fantastic flowering of henbit showing us something about how the soil has been treated recently? Does henbit flourish where other plants succumb to no-till herbicides? Do real chickens eat henbit?

I don’t know. I do know that henbit seems more prolific than it used to be, even in my urban yard.

The happy marriage of big vision and practical skills at the splendid Growing Kentucky II conference in mid-March inspired me. Listening, watching, tasting sustainably grown foods, I could see Kentucky renewed, reborn, re-rooted in a new level of attention to our land, water, air, and food.

The conference gave me new eyes for looking at two publications that arrived this week. First, the Kentucky School Boards Association’s publication, Kentucky School Advocate, described increased interest in agriculture courses in Kentucky’s public schools.

Second, the Lexington Herald-Leader published a special “Newspapers in Education” section devoted to agriculture that I cannot locate online. Kentucky Proud co-sponsored the section, so locally grown foods and farmers markets got a little bit of ink. Read the rest of this entry »

Accomplished farmers, visionary thinkers, inventive chefs, happy eaters, fine food writers and photographers, smart profs and researchers, committed policy makers, creative artists - a fine stew of hope, realism, and excitement about the present and future of Kentucky’s sustainable agriculture.