Here are two amazing opportunities for farming and Jewish learning this summer - with The Jewish Farm School:

Hillel Organic Farm Alternative Breaks
The Jewish Farm School, in partnership with Hillel, will provide a total of 60 college students the opportunity to participate in a weeklong farm-immersion experience. During the two programs, students will be volunteering on sustainable farms located on the East and West coasts. No previous experience is necessary. June 11-18 (Kayam Farm, MD) and June 24-July 1 (Oz Farm, CA). Cost $200 - details here.

Program Highlights:
Learn basic skills in sustainable agriculture, food preservation, natural building and herbal remedies.
Discuss issues of food justice, sustainability and Jewish tradition.
Work alongside other college students and enjoy delicious homegrown food.

JFS Seminar on Organic Agriculture and Eductional Gardening
June 2-5
Surprise Lake Camp, Cold Spring, NY

Join us for our 3rd annual seminar in Organic Agriculture and Educational Gardening. Run in partnership with the Teva Learning Center, this program is designed for educators seeking to incorporate gardening or farming into their work. Register here.

Seminar Highlights:
Experience an early morning harvest at an organic farm and learn how small-scale, sustainable agriculture operates - first hand.
Learn the skills to build your own Jewish garden.
Study traditional Jewish texts and contemporary scholarship.
Discuss garden-based curriculum and activities.

The Jewish Farm School is supported by Hazon.

Since the days of the Bible, Jewish tradition has had something to say about appropriate waste disposal:

“Further, there shall be an area for you outside the camp, where you may relieve yourself. With your gear you shall have a spike, and when you have squatted you shall dig a hole with it and cover up your excrement.”– Deuteronomy 23:13-14

The latest in waste technology, however, is not in spikes and holes, but one of the oldest tricks in the book: compost. Consider this fact: flush toilets account for 40% of household water consumption in Israel. In other words, almost half of the water used in Israeli households goes to disposal and transport (through the sewage system) of peoples’ daily needs. A new company, operating according to a “Jewish-holistic, small is beautiful” philosophy, believes that this is unnecessary. In a country where a chronic water shortage causes rivers, lakes and nature preserves to dry up, brings about the collapse of ecosystems and exacerbates an already intractable political situation, they just might be onto something.  Read more at Treehugger.com:

Can the Composting Porto-Potty Solve Israel’s Water Woes?
By Jesse Fox, Tel Aviv, Israel
February, 02, 2008
Read full article

This past Shabbat, my boyfriend and I walked from Park Slope to Red Hook, Brooklyn (an hour each way - no, not uphill) to the Red Hook Harvest Festival.  He’d heard me yammer on for a while about the ”real life FARM” in the middle of Brooklyn, but as we passed the many corner stores and high rises that typify the borough, I think he started to doubt that such a place could really exist.  Until we arrived.

In the middle of a once dilapidated asphalt playground, 2.75 acres of earth and plants now thrive.  Brooklyn has a rich farming history - as late as the 19th century, Brooklyn was the second most productive agricultural county in the United States, second only to Queens.  But today, growing anything more than what fits in a window box or on a stoop seems nothing short of a miracle.    

The Red Hook farm was started by Ian Marvey, founder of an organization called Added Value, which empowers neighborhood kids and teens to learn farming and business skills (through farmer’s markets and sales to local restaurants), while strengthening the local community.  According to Added-Value’s website:  

“Twice in the past three years Red Hook’s only full-service grocery store closed, forcing residents to walk three miles and cross an eight lane road or take a $10 cab if they want to shop there. Red Hook was a textbook example of a broken food system and its effects on a community.  Now, we are becoming a model of how residents, businesses, social service agencies and religious institutions can begin to rebuild a food system that promotes social interaction and economic activity while nurturing our health and improving the environment.” 

Folks in the neighborhood know the farm.  Lost in an unfamiliar part of town, I asked a passing teenager if he knew where the corner of Columbia and Sigourney street was (unlike most rural farms, this one has an intersection).  He didn’t know.

“Um, do you know where the, uh, farm is?” I asked sheepishly.

“Oh yeah - the farm’s that way” he said, pointing us on. 

Read more »

(Thanks for this guest post from Jessica Schessler of SHI)

Slash and burn is one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction in Central America. Sustainable Harvest International is working to curb this destruction, while improving the lives of families living in these regions. I’ve been fortunate enough to intern with SHI for the summer and have learned a great deal about their work.

SHI has worked with more than 850 families in the past 10 years, and has saved tens of thousands of acres of tropical forests from slash-and-burn destruction. What is my favorite part of this effort? Not only does SHI save acres and acres, but they do it by teaching local farmers sustainable uses, such as “organic vegetable gardens, wood-conserving stoves, community loan funds and a host of other projects…” So not only is SHI helping out the environment, but they are improving the health and economic lives of the people living in it.

For the rest of the summer it’s easier than ever to support SHI, through Stonyfield Yogurt’s Bid With Your Lid campaign! Vote online and send in specially marked yogurt lids with your vote for SHI and help allocate a portion of $40,000 to SHI, while collecting cool prizes. For more information on SHI and how to vote, visit Stoneyfield.

Read more »

Rabbi Ben Bag-Bag used to say of the Torah: “Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. Pore over it, and wax gray and old over it. Stir not from it for you can have no better rule than it” - Pirke Avot 14:25, Sayings of Our Fathers. 

Whether we stir or not, though it definitely helps to stir, compost happens.  We are all witness to the irrefutable process of decay in varying degrees of time, as benign as the gradual whither of a solitary banana left in the fruit bowl too long (alright already you know who you are: you cannot continue to ignore that mealy brown banana in your kitchen any longer…it’s bordering on neglect now…time to make a decision…turn brown ‘nanas into ‘nanabread!), or perhaps more tragically, the swift demise of those raspberries that hosted a mold convention—several different molds—within a day of being washed and refrigerated (I have a strict policy of having no “wounded soldiers” by eating any berries I buy on the way home).

Read more »