Lopez Community Farm has begun registration for their 2009 CSA season! What is CSA? Community Supported Agriculture is a way in which community members become farm members. By “investing” at the beginning of the growing season, members provide the farm with the “seed” money (literally and figuratively) needed to keep the farm running for the rest of the year. At Lopez Community Farm, shares range from small, standard, and large ($400, $500, and $600 for the six month season from June through November). The intended return is a generally greater value of the freshest vegetables, herbs, and flowers cultivated and harvested specifically for you. Each week members drop by the farm on a designated day to pick up their produce. This year’s harvest will include upwards of 100 favorite, heirloom and new varieties of vegetables whose arrival will reflect the changing seasons. “What makes a CSA unique is that it allows the farm organism to live and breathe more naturally. We don’t force the soil to produce large amounts of particular crops that happen to make the most money in the market. Our work is to create balance on the farm,” said Julie Bottjen, one of the new managers of the farm.
What’s YOUR treasure? The Orcas Island Historical Museum is having an antiques “road show” on the Horseshoe Highway! Do you have heirlooms in your attic? Bucks in your basement? Come to the Orcas Grange Saturday April 11 from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. to find out from the experts.
The Orcas Choral Society will present the “Requiem” by Gabriel Fauré on Saturday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday, March 15 at 3 p.m. at the Orcas Island Community Church.
Several rare butterflies have been seen in the San Juan Islands. Only the Island Marble butterfly is found only in the islands and nowhere else!
Have you noticed how your legs tend to swell when the weather is extra hot, or if you are standing for long periods of time, or if you eat a lot of salty food? You haven’t? I’m sad, because now you can’t fully enjoy this article about edema. Edema is the condition of excess fluid in the body and results in swelling. It is a very common problem, more common the older one gets, until you actually die, after which it is extremely uncommon, virtually unheard of. Edema is bad. It can cause pain, skin breakdown, infection, and is the leading cause of kankles.
Ever wonder what happens to all the wool from Lopez sheep? For the past year and a half, a lot of it has ended up with Maxine Bronstein and Debbie Hayward at their Lopez business Island Fibers.
Substantial, thoughtful, real: three words used to describe any number of potential possibilities. But in the case of Stephanie Iverson, a local painter and visual artist known for pushing the boundaries of her chosen art form, I am certain that these words offer perhaps the most succinct depiction of her relationship to her work, her artwork’s relationship to her community, and to artistic expression itself.
BOSTON — I suppose this falls under the general heading: “Be Careful What You Wish For.”
American Life in Poetry
I picked this book up while waiting for the ferry in the way that you take a sandwich that a friend has offered you; you didn’t pick the sandwich. You didn’t make the sandwich. Really, the sandwich would not be your first choice. But surprisingly, the sandwich, you find, is tasty and interesting.
When Smithsonian naturalist C.B.R. Kennerly visited San Juan Island in 1860, his hosts at Camp Pickett insisted that he visit the “Oak Prairie”, five bone-rattling horseback miles into the interior through swampy wetlands and meadows overgrown with ferns. At the headwaters of False Bay, Kennerly found several square miles of scattered oaks. Where and what exactly was the Oak Prairie? Was it the principal, or perhaps the only oak-dominated landscape in San Juan County 150 years ago?
A new play is coming to the Lopez Community Center this March and audiences will “laugh until they cry and cry until they laugh,” said Carol Steckler, producer and mind behind the production of Joe Di Pietro’s “Over The River and Through the Woods”.
Our national health care system is in a sorry state because we have a lack of rational leadership, but I have a plan to fix it. It’s new, it’s amazing, and it’s called “Cap and Trade”. What is Cap and Trade? Well first of all, like everything else that I write about, it is pure, shameless plagiarism. Plagiarism is the best thing ever. No creative effort required. I slump at my computer, with a heart rate of 2, semi comatose, drooling, and disgorge prose already written by someone else. This month I am gleefully ripping off Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund who popularized the phrase Cap and Trade in his address of the global warming problem. The idea, in essence, is that everything that consumes fossil fuel, each car, tanker ship, business, factory, etc., is allotted a certain amount of carbon emissions above which they are required to pay a tax. The tax monies are used to develop green industries. On the other hand, Cap and Trade also allows for “carbon credits” which are awarded if your factory, or whatever, sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. Such a factory could sell its carbon credits to others who are not so green.
