August 31st, 2010 by TN

A Celebration of Local, Seasonal Food

Please join us on Sunday, September 19th at 6:00 PM for the Local Flavor Community Potluck Picnic, a celebration of locally grown, seasonal food.

You are invited to bring a potluck dish using as many locally grown ingredients as possible from your garden, CSA, Farmer’s Market, farmstand or local food artisan. Label your dish so we know what’s in it and who to thank. Also bring your beverage of choice: if it’s local and in a pitcher to share, even better. We will provide pitchers of refreshing local water.

The picnic will be on the grounds of the First Parish Church of Newbury at 20 High Road adjacent to the New Eden Community Garden and chicken Co-op. In the event of rain we will move the event indoors.

We are aiming for a zero-waste event, so please bring your own “mess kits” – non-disposable plate, cup, utensils and cloth napkin. Leftover vegetable waste can be composted in the New Eden compost bins. Our August potluck had only one small styrofoam plate left that could not be recycled or composted!

Local musicians are welcome to bring their acoustic instruments and/or voices for a potluck jam session. Don’t just be entertained, be the entertainment!

So come along, bring the family, your potluck dish, beverage of choice, “mess kit”, a blanket or chair for seating and acoustic musical instruments. We’re looking forward to a fun time for all.

The picnic is co-sponsored by Transition Newburyport and the New Eden Collaborative. For further information e-mail transition@transitionnewburyport.org

March 7th, 2010 by admin

Are you troubled by what you learned about our nation’s food system from Food, Inc., King Corn, The Future of Food, or The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and wonder what you can do about it?  Concerned about the dependence of our industrialized agricultural system on fossil fuels for fertilizers, pesticides, farm machinery, food processing, storage and transport in the face of climate change and fossil fuel depletion?

Transition Newburyport is seeking individuals interested in working together to create a vision and a pathway to the food system of the future for our community, to tackle the question of how we can move toward a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient food system that will not only make us more self-reliant but will also serve to strengthen our local economy.

Our local food system includes all the growers, producers, processors, distributors, retailers, restaurants, school food programs, food pantries and every food consumer — in other words, everyone. What is more basic and central to our everyday lives than food?

We’ll be exploring questions such as: Where does our food come from? Could the Newburyport area feed itself? If not, why not, and what can we do to stimulate local food production? Does everyone who wants to grow food in our community have access to the land to do it?

If you are interested, please email us at transition@transitionnewburyport.org. We’ll be scheduling a get together in February to begin discussing these questions. The meeting will, of course, involve good local food as well as good company.

March 7th, 2010 by admin

Three members of Transition Newburyport joined in the world-wide No Impact Week. The goal was to raise awareness of our own ‘footprint’ on the planet by reducing our energy, water and material consumption. The Daily News wrote an article about the experiment, and some of us wrote about our experiences on the Transition Massachusetts ning site.

Here is just one entry by Niall Robinson, who participated with his wife and two children:

“Perhaps the biggest learnings for us were around the ‘multiplication effect’ of changing our behaviors.

I must admit I too was not fazed by the trash perspective until I thought about what I purchased at work and ended up throwing away. My family already composts our kitchen scraps, buys local and reuses all we can so I was feeling comfortable about our trash footprint at home. But at work, our cafeteria is a ‘healthy’ walk away from my cubicle so I bring everything back to my desk. Usually a cardboard box and grease proof paper for my sandwich plus in the morning there is another container for my oatmeal or bagel. Now granted my work colleagues already think I’m “interesting” in that I bring home the cardboard containers (they are a great weed blocker in my garden) but I thought there was an opportunity to improve and also have a bit of fun.

Not to digress too much but I was recently put on to Amory Lovins’ (actually a friend had been pestering me for awhile to watch it and I finally did — http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid231.php ) series of lectures at Stanford University where he talks about getting multiple benefits from single expenditures. Though Amory was talking about building smarter buildings the same applies to almost everything you do i.e. maximize the number of benefits you get from what you do.

So I decided to bring in my own lunch and breakfast. The benefits were multiple:

1. I eliminated my trash by using reusable utensils etc.
2. I saved money by not buying expensive food at the cafeteria.
3. I controlled the food I ate.
4. I reduced my carbon footprint by sourcing my work meals locally.
5. I reduced our food waste at home (using up leftovers).
6. And I felt better!

And so, not to get too philosophical, I think a big takeaway is that we have to ‘think out of the box.’ We have to think creatively to solve these problems, and yes, the solutions should be imaginative and ‘better’ than what we know today. As William McDonough talks about, up-cycling is the way — not re-cycling or down-cycling.”

If you are interested in trying it out for yourself a new nationwide No Impact Week is being launched on November 15.

March 7th, 2010 by admin

Permaculture Demonstration Plot
A Living Experiment

We continue to watch and learn from our Permaculture Plot at the New Eden Community Garden. We’ve harvested strawberries, beans, turnips, tomatoes, lamb’s quarters, lettuce, kale, basil and mint for eating as well as comfrey and calendula to make salves in the fall.
Perma plot 3 width
Check out the New Eden Community Garden website blog and schedule of food preservation workshops offerings.

Charlotte Dion, our advisor and the organizer of the North Shore Permaculture Meetup, is co-hosting a 2-day Permaculture Workshop September 12 & 13 in Cambridge. The workshop will focus on providing individuals with practical tools for creating positive social change, inner-city gardening techniques, indoor and apartment gardening, making fermented foods, whole foods, Living Machines and natural wastewater treatment, biogas generators, ecological niche market and value added business ideas, passive integrated water systems, rain gardens that alleviate flooding while addressing sewage treatment plant overflows and clean water, living roofs, rooftop gardens and regional energy systems.For more details visit Urban Permaculture Workshop with Andrew Faust .

June '09

community, gardening, permaculture

November 29th, 2009 by admin

Monday, November 9

Monday November 9th Transition Newburyport and Long Way Home co-hosted the movie Garbage Warrior at the Newburyport Public Library.  Mike Reynolds, the garbage warrior, builds self-sustaining homes, “earthships”, made of re-purposed tires, cans and bottles.  One of Mike’s favorite techniques is to utilize passive solar energy by building walls of tires packed with earth.  The free movie showing was very well attended and sparked a dialogue we hope to continue.  For those of you who were not able to attend, the movie is available though the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium.

September 20th, 2009 by admin

FARM FOR THE FUTURE FILM- 7:00PM, September 26,
Harvest Festival – Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27

We participated in the 3-day Harvest Festival running from Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27 in partnership with the Newburyport Farmers Market, The First Parish Church of Newbury and the Spencer-Peirce Little Farm.

Saturday evening at the First Parish Church we will be showing the movie, “Farm for the Future”. Wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family’s farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future, and discovers that nature holds the key.

With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family’s wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land. But last year’s high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realizing that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is.

Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future.

A ‘Visioning our Future’ discussion will follow the show.

community, farming, gardens