Grow Local Food

Environment > Nourish community health, save energy, and reduce pollution.

Urban Permaculture

The Chestertown Environmental Committee screened Urban Permaculture as the seventh event in its 2017 First Thursday Environmental Series.

Film Takeaways

1. Public spaces in town need some little permaculture beds!
2. Chestertown permablitz!
3. Chestertown could use more fruit trees and more small edible gardens
4. Our committee needs to form a permaculture subcommittee
5. Online permaculture
6. Permablitz group in Chestertown
7. Law-nlessness = making your yard work for you
8. Thanks — great movie with so many ideas. It would be great to start a community garden. Also a plant swap in the spring. — Pam V.
9. Makes me want to make my lawn a garden!
10. Would it be possible to set up an aquaponics system at the new waterfront campus building once it’s built?
11. Makes me want to start my veggie garden all over again! — Roy
12. Washington College / Chestertown could use a “zen” permaculture garden! Koi, aquaponics, microhabitats. Grow food and relax.
13. Let’s have a community garden permablitz! Fruit tree scapes!
14. Let’s make the rails to trails path a community food forest!
15. Can the Environmental Committee sponsor permaculture training or workshops?

Fresh

The Chestertown Environmental Committee screened Fresh as the sixth event in its 2017 First Thursday Environmental Series.

Film Takeaways

1. Fresh — everyone should see it. Fresh — everyone should eat it. We — together — can do it.
2. I liked that this film featured farmers and community members finding creative alternatives to our predominant industrial food system.
3. Well done! — Betty Kerr
4. Every farmer should see Fresh. I can’t wait to get home and eat a fresh tomato from our garden! — Ford
5. Idea for Chestertown: Wednesday night Farmers’ Market to make it easier for people to purchase local food during the week.
6. This topic is really all about awareness. The decision is common sense once the facts are provided. It would be great if we could do an awareness week in Chestertown: “Sustainable Farming Awareness Week” or something. An event where everyone, not just those interested, hears the facts.
7. Brilliant! How do we get this message to the people?
8. Amazing that organic farming is ultimately more productive than the industrial food complex.
9. We are so blessed to live where we are and have fresh food. How can we influence the chemical-using farmers to change and halt the degradation?!
10. I really enjoyed the film. I’ve decided to stop eating animals that walk on 4 legs and hope to live and eat more sustainably. Thank you!
11. Will Allen’s work with Growing Power in Milwaukee is an inspirational model for Chestertown.
12. How can we prioritize the creation of local, resilient food systems?
13. Motivating film about sustainable agriculture and permaculture. Kent County can lead a food revolution!
14. Thanks for hosting this movie! I loved it and it really validated why I garden organically and support local organic farmers too.

Wendell Berry, Poet and Prophet

The Chestertown Environmental Committee screened Wendell Berry, Poet and Prophet as the fifth event in its 2017 First Thursday Environmental Series.

Film Takeaways

1. Great film and great story.
2. Do/show more things like this on first Thursdays.
3. Solutions are complex! Money politics is nearly impossible to overcome!
4. How can we who live in “town limits” help the land more? Allow chickens and small livestock? Films on Permaculture!
5. A voice of reason and faith and hope shared with utter realism and absolute caring.
6. A real motivator — great movie! — JF
7. Great film! Show it again.
8. Thanks for the opportunity to fully experience this wonderful interview with one of my favorite writers and thinkers!
9. Can we promote diverse food production on a small scale in town to support our community health?
10. The importance of not only diversity and balance in the land, but in ourselves.
11. Always do the right thing, even when it’s contrary to conventional thinking or political leadership.

We Feed the World

The Chestertown Environmental Committee screened We Feed the World as the fourth event in its 2017 First Thursday Environmental Series.

Film Takeaways

1. More people need to see this film. EDUCATION!
2. Makes me want to eat 100% local food.
3. How can we help our community transition to resilient, local foodways?
4. Nestle should feed and water the N/E Brazilians.
5. Very good job presenting “one side” (plus) of a complex and multifaceted process/problem. Would like to see the other views/ideas/“solutions”? Thanks!
6. Makes me thankful we raise our own food and chickens as much as possible. — RM
7. Very powerful and very depressing. May give up chicken.
8. Awesome and frightening like Soylent Green. Show it again.
9. Bleak.
10. Is access to food/water is an inalienable human right? Can we share resources without privatizing them?
11. Powerful. The unintended global consequences of large scale agribusiness.

Seed: The Untold Story

The Chestertown Environmental Committee screened Seed: The Untold Story as second event in its 2017 First Thursday Environmental Series.

Film Takeaways

About the Film
1. This is one film that should have been screened before it was shown. It is one-sided and an anti-Monsanto, anti-GMO film that makes no mention of the global effort that has been made to save genetic diversity of the major food and tree crops worldwide. Check out the work done by
CGIAR (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) and CAMCORE (Central America and Mexico Coniferous Resources Cooperative). — Carl Gallegos
2. At the end they say it is up to us to bring back the seed diversity. Do we think we have what it takes? What will the future hold for seeds?
3. We need to take back control of our survival from the corporations that don’t operate in our best interest.
4. We need to break the links between corporations and our elected officials—demand campaign election reform. Get big corporation/big money out of elections.
5. Get Congress to pass a law that prohibits the patenting of natural seeds. Label GMO products.
6. Fascinating film. Full of informative background behind the headlines we see. Gave me a greater understanding of the history and evolution from where this world once was to where we are now.
7. I can’t wait to plant my seeds I got from Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. Thanks for the inspiration. —Ford
8. Where do we find reliable non-GMO seeds?
9. Impressive. How do we act here in Kent County? We also we need to tell supermarkets “no” to GMO foods. But how???
10. Could we please watch Sharkwater and DamNation?
11. We need to start a seed swap!
12. What chemicals are Monsanto testing in Galena? Kent County? USA? GMO testing in Kent County?
13. What would it take to start a seed bank in Kent County?
14. GMO-causing cancers and other health concerns. Research needed.
15. Beautiful presentation and excellent information on seed saving, the preservation of biodiversity, and the sad loss of our ancestral heritage. We have a right to reclaim our knowledge of what it means to be human participants in a natural world.
16. There is a seed swap at the Chestertown branch of the Kent County Library every spring.

Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective

The Chestertown Environmental Committee screened Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective as the eleventh event in its 2016 First Thursday Environmental Series.

Film Takeaways

About the Film
1. Wow—thanks!
2. The concept of regenerativity vs. sustainability was new. A very different way to think about what I grow.
3. Another view of our world—and our place and mandate to integrate our food production more completely and wisely for now and tomorrow!
4. Inhabit—striking. Great diversity of examples in permaculture.
5. Lots of info to learn from about about.
6. Awesome, well done movie.

Composting
1. We need to compost waste food and vegetation!

Education
1. Permaculture gardens and training for/in schools.
2. Can we bring permaculture training to our area?

Community Advocacy and Ideas
1. Would love to see some rooftop gardens, or the encouragement of them, in Chestertown!
2. Let’s host permablitz events!
3. Riparian buffers with stacked functions along the Chester?
4. What about vegetable buffers along the rivers?
5. Would it be possible to start small scale permaculture in Wilmer Park or a demonstration step-by-step garden?
6. Can we grow vegetables in the parks?

Olamana Gardens

The Chestertown Environmental Committee screened Olamana Gardens as the tenth event in its 2016 First Thursday Environmental Series.

Film Takeaways

About the Film
1. What a fantastic presentation “love what you do” and that fella sure does. Thanks!
2. Looks like a lot of work, but inventing all that stuff was amazing.
3. Amazing way to keep circulating nutrients and not pollute air or land or water!
4. The plumbing could be a two hour movie of its own 🙂
5. Great project idea for educating young adults in biology, engineering, physics etc.
6. Makes my little fish pond look quite pallid.
7. Very interesting!
8. Very, very nice. Makes me want to start over.
9. Happy worms. Happy chickens. Happy fish. Happy taro. Happy man!!!

Farm Diversification with Niche Crops Talk

The Chestertown Environmental Committee hosted a public talk by Andrew Ristvey on aronia production as the sixth event in its 2016 First Thursday Environmental Series.

Attendees sampled aronia jam on crackers as part of the talk.