Driving directions & parking details

In the words of the dapper young Mr. Finch…

Driving directions!:

From I-90 (coming in from Oregon and Washington)

• Take the Van Buren Street exit and travel southbound on Van Buren Street.  Merge into the right-hand lane.
• At the stoplight, turn right onto Broadway Street.
• Move into the furthest left-hand lane and turn left onto Madison at the stoplight.
• Driving over the bridge, stay in the left-hand lane and veer left at the fork in the road.  After the fork, stay to the left and turn left at the stoplight onto South 6th Street East.
• Move into the right-hand lane.  Continue on South 6th Street East until you have veered left in front of the Adams Center.
• Turn right onto campus drive and follow until you have reached the University Center on your right (about 1/2 a mile)

From US 12/93 Northbound

• US 12/93 Northbound Turns into Brooks Street through Missoula.
• Follow Brooks Street through Missoula to Higgins Avenue.  Brooks will merge with Higgins at Hellgate High School.
• Move into the right hand lane and turn right onto Sixth Street.
• Follow sixth street until you have veered left in front of the Adams Center on campus.
• Turn right onto campus drive and follow until you reach the University Center on your right (about 1/2 a mile)

We strongly suggest that you look up directions from their homes on googlemaps for complete directions.

As for parking!:

After 5pm on friday all campus parking is free as well as on the weekend.  So we shouldn’t have a problem.  If people arrive early we can direct them to free parking when they register (until 5pm).

See you soon!

Pre-Convergence Details!

Get ready:

On Friday, we will awake early.

On Friday, we will travel far.

On Friday, we will CONVERGE!

The Real Food Youth Convergence: Cross Pollinating Ideas & Action is coming rapidly upon us, to start this Friday at 5:30pm! Over 100 students from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana will be rolling on their respective vehicles towards Missoula. They are all great achievers: great lofty ideas, working from the ground. Hands dirty from planting seedlings, facilitating strategy meetings, leading campus policy campaigns, taking it to the green, to the streets! They are all of you! Some details are below:

1. IT IS HAPPENING!

RFYC NW is this weekend! Check-in starts Friday evening at 5:30, dinner starts at 7pm, located in the University Center (UC) of the University of Montana in Missoula. You will find more detailed information about workshop content upon arriving in your program packet.

NOTE: Some of you have not yet paid the registration fee; you must pay in cash/check upon arrival, or online before Thursday at noon (register/payment links at realfoodnorthwest.wordpress.com). If you find you are unable to attend, please email Katelyn (northwest@realfoodchallenge.org) ASAP with the subject line: CANNOT ATTEND.

2. Places & spaces

When you arrive in Missoula on Friday evening, please head straight to the UC, where all of our program will take place. Our sleeping arrangements are in a very close-by church, which we will be walking to and from every day, and we will be sleeping in large rooms on the floor. Make sure to bring walking shoes and comfortable sleeping bags etc.!

3. Photography! Videography! Blogography!

Do you have a good eye, some gnarly skills with a video camera, or are a qualified wordsmith? We need people to help document this momentous occasion with great photographs, videos, and blog entries. Please bring your cameras and freshly sharpened pencils, and contact Katelyn if you want to be a designated documentor!

4. Bus situation

If you plan on riding the bus from Portland to Missoula and back, you need to reserve a seat. If you haven’t already done so, email Katelyn with the subject line “GET ON THE BUS.” There are few seats left, so hop on!

We will be leaving Portland at 8am SHARP, which means you must arrive by 7:30am at the departure point (in central Portland; still TBA. Please be patient with the details). We will be returning to Portland around 9 or 10pm on Sunday night.

Also, breakfast will be provided on Friday morning, but not lunch. We will not be stopping for food, so please come equipped with afternoon snacks!

Lastly, the bus will cost is $50 per person. Please bring cash or a check (made out to “The Food Project” with “Real Food Challenge” in the memo line) to pay before boarding. You may also pay online in the same way you did the registration fee. If you school is paying for your transportation, have the business office pay The Food Project directly; I can provide you with a tax id #. The point person for each school may contact me for more information.

5. What to bring

There is a saying in Montana that if the weather doesn’t suit you, just wait fifteen minutes and it’ll change. February marks the transition between the end of winter and the beginning of spring; because it is an uncertain time, it is important to come prepared for all kinds of weather… but mostly the cold!

Please bring:

• A warm coat, a rain jacket, and long underwear in case of rain or snow
• A warm hat, gloves, and scarf
• Pants and long sleeved shirts – you probably won’t need shorts unless there is a solar flare or volcanic eruption. Cotton isn’t the warmest of fabrics: if you have them, bring fleece, wool, etc.
• Shoes that you will be comfortable walking in for a mile
• Warm sleeping bag and pillow (plus sleeping pad; we’ll be sleeping on the floor), towel, and personal toiletry items
• a bit of spending money for the trip (always a good idea, right?!)
• Musical instruments, art, poetry to share
• flyers & literature from other awesome groups to share
• Water bottle and/or favorite mug
• Notebook/paper, pen/pencil
• Cameras, etc.!
• Your energy and your willingness to contribute, be challenged, learn, and have fun
• Your commitment to take your experience back to your college and community

6. Pre-Convergence Readings

Attached are some readings that we love: articles all about the Real Food Challenge and how to rock. Please read them (print them out and bring them to the convergence, too!)

• Real Food Principles (http://realfoodchallenge.org/about/principles)
• 3 Doors (http://realfoodchallenge.org/blog/keynote-speech-northeast-real-food-summit-2007)
• The Potential of Fun To Create Paradigm Shift
• Seven Priorities for the Food Movement

7. Getting to know you…

We have created this googledoc so that you can enter info about yourself for others to see who is coming! Go ahead and introduce yourself here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvqXBO9djSWsdDdGc2JDeVdVOWhONVVkZEJyanJaRUE&hl=en

Emergency emails can be sent to northwest@realfoodchallenge.org, but please make sure to be very specific in your subject line. The email traffic over here is intense! But it’s all worth it: This weekend we’ll be working together in a variety of different settings to generate ideas, get inspired, enjoy ourselves and, most importantly, seize the day!

Are you ready?

See! You! Soon!

The Convergence Planning Team

Farmer/manager job opportunity at Montana State University in Bozeman

This position is associated with Towne’s Harvest Garden (THG), a collaborative project of the College of Agriculture, and the Department of Health and Human Development in the College of Education, Health & Human Development. Towne’s Harvest Garden is a 3 acre vegetable farm which serves as an outdoor classroom and laboratory for the Sustainable Food and Bioenergy Systems (SFBS) degree program. The garden project includes a Community Supported Agriculture Program, a growing partnership with the Gallatin Valley Food Bank, and outreach and sales at two community farmers’ markets and one campus farm stand. The Towne s Harvest Garden is a site for SFBS internships as well as service learning on campus, and community service. For more information please go to the MSU Website

Phil Howard & the Organic Foods Industry

A couple months ago I came across Phil Howard’s webpage. He is an assistant professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies. He is also a visual thinker. Obviously.

Through his different research projects, he’s come up with a fantastic way to display the info we were always searching for, but never really wanted to find.

Organic isn't necessarily community based.

“GAWD I love Dagoba chocolates! This choco bar is soooo gooood.”

“Katelyn, aren’t they owned by Hershey’s?”

“Pssh, no. They are too tastey. Plus they are organic.”
“Uhhh, I think that they are.”

“No they aren’t.”

“Yes, they are.”

“No they’re not!”

“Yes, they are!”

…That [approximate/hypothetical] conversation I had last March with a housemate, when past Northwest Organizer Shannon Kuhn (at right) sent me a HUGE box of Dagoba donations for the Northwest Real Food Summit 2009. I was so excited to try all of the different flavors but managed to fend off the rest of my housemates before the actual event started. Sad to say, DAGOBA REALLY IS OWNED BY HERSHEY’S, and as that corporation is very much not based in any sort of community, it totally doesn’t count as Real Food (for this year’s Convergence we’ve opted out of Dagoba and opted into some other gnarly awesome chocolate makers, such as Theo’s Chocolates). I found this out from Mr. Howard. Which other organic foods do you love and get the warm fuzzies from purchasing in the diagram above? And how could you not fall for many of them? They woo you in with their gourmet- or pastoral idyllic-looking packaging and advertising, but the reality is that you are still supporting some crazy huge corporation. (“But it’s cool that they offer organic,” you might say, but one could counterpoint saying that they only offer organic food things in order to not lose your business. I.e. monieeezzz.)

Well. Here’s another one of Mr. Howard’s graphs, which shows independent organic producers, not owned by a larger corporation; some of which ( the purple blobs) are cooperatively owned

"Most remaining independent organic processors have resisted substantial buyout offers (typically 2 times annual sales). "

If you are going to make a change in your purchasing practices, make a REAL change. Supporting not just organic foods, but also those that are community-based, local, fair, and humane!

Sincerely,

katelyn

(p.s. if you like rants like these, come to our convergence to hear more of em and give em yurself! hee hee. Click on the PINK Convergence Registration in the right top corner!)

Bucolic Garden Society: Lewis & Clark College

Ah, the the last days of summer… a time to take a moment to come together and enjoy the fruits of your labor around a delicious, garden-fresh meal. Or, if you were one of the Lewis and Clark students this September who put dozens of labor hours into clearing out an overgrown garden plot, a time to blast some David Rovics and pull some weeds!

Ironically, the  gardening club at Lewis and Clark has been one of the least sustainable student groups over the last several years because there was little coordination from year to year and the plot frequently became overgrown during the summer. This year, a core group of seven sophomores and their supporters, who refer to themselves as the Bucolic Garden Society, decided to change that. In addition to clearing out the garden plot located on the school’s graduate school campus and planting the plot with a winter cover crop of fava beans, this group has successfully petitioned for a student worker to maintain the gardens over the summer as well as the addition of a second plot in the residential area of campus.

The second garden plot will be located just a few feet from what will be the school’s Pioneers in Environmental Service and Action theme floor, and one resident advisor in the Forest Complex each year will have the responsibility for coordinating garden activities with campus living. In addition, members of the Bucolic Garden Society are working with one of the school’s pre-college service trips to engage incoming freshman in a day of service in the garden in order to engage new members of the community.

The Bucolic Garden Society has a lot on it’s plate for spring semester,  including planting and weeding both gardens, hiring the summer student worker, and trying to obtain enough funds for a wheelbarrow, a drip irrigation system, and a compost bin. Hopefully these efforts, along with the hard work of students and the outstanding support of LC’s Facilities Services, Sustainability Council, Campus Living, and Office of Career and Community Engagement will help both on-campus gardens prosper for many years to come.

– This update was written by Tara Brown, a Bucolic Gardener at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Do YOU have an update from YOUR school? Email katelyn at northwest@realfoodchallenge.org or visit your state page (links below, at right) and post an update!

Once last action for 2009!

I know that this is quite late notice, but here is a message from RFC National. Please 5, 10 minutes out of your day today to add some fuel to our fire! Plus, what a way to end the year?!! Here we go:

Friends,
Now that finals are over, take a few minutes from your break to take back control of your food!

There are 2 million farmers and 300 million eaters in the United States. Standing between them is a handful of corporations who control how food gets from one side to the other.

Let’s change the equation.

For the first time ever, the Justice Department is examining how big business controls food and farming–and they want to hear from YOU by December 31!

Most of what matters to you about why food isn’t healthier, safer, tastier, or all-around better is affected by the narrow bottleneck of power between producers and consumers. And right now, the Obama Administration wants to hear stories about how that bottleneck affects regular people.

Now’s your chance: Write a short comment about how big business’ control of food affects you. We’ve made it really easy–get your ideas jumpstarted here, and then take a look at this super easy template and sample letters. Your comment can be short and informal; don’t worry about spelling out the connections too precisely. The important thing is to express from your own experience what most concerns you or how you’ve been affected by corporate consolidation in the food industry. Be honest and speak from your heart. Your voice REALLY matters.

Maybe you don’t feel like you’re qualified to write a comment, or you feel like your voice wouldn’t matter–but you are and it does. The Justice Department is specifically seeking comments and stories about how corporate control of the food system affects average citizens–this is our chance to tell them what’s wrong with the food system. DO IT NOW: comments are due by December 31!

Get started!

Keep it real,
The Real Food Challenge Team

PS Don’t forget that your contribution to the Real Food Challenge will be DOUBLED if you donate by December 31!  Visit our website to donate.

Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellowship

Our friend and fellow Real-Foodie, Megan Mills-Novoa, is a National Hunger Fellow this year, working in Albuquerque to assess the farm to school program at a local middle school. Sounds pretty awesome. She asked me to post her announcement below:

Do you want to spend a year fighting hunger and poverty with a tight-knit community of emerging leaders? Apply to become a Hunger Fellow. Emerson National Hunger Fellows shape and implement local social justice programs all over the U.S., and then research and support national policy initiative in Washington D.C. Apply by January 20th if you are interested in being part of the 17th Fellowship class. For more information visit: http://www.hungercenter.org/national/national.cfm.

If you are interested in hearing about the Hunger Fellow Experience from current fellows contact: Megan Mills-Novoa at mmills-novoa@hungercenter.org or Daniel Lau at dlau@hungercenter.org

Getting Real Food at Southern Oregon University

Message from Sarah Rudeen at Southern Oregon University:

Over the summer, Southern Oregon University signed a 2-year (renewable 3rd year) contract with Sodexo. The transition was quick and disorganized, so things got off to a rough start. Over winter break they are putting some major $$$ into renovations on campus and it sounds like they intend to invest quite a bit here. So far, the food is marginal at best (I’ve personally only purchased one meal just to investigate. Nope… I’ll be sticking to my cheaper, organic snacks, thanks.)

As put-off as we were about contracting with one of the “big three,” I’m
actually encouraged by the philosophy of our general manager. She comes from
U of AK-Fairbanks where she helped start a student garden and her 2nd-down
manager (who just arrived a couple of weeks ago) is a guy from my hometown
who is supposed to be a sustainability-guru. I haven’t had time to sit down
and chat with him, but I know that he’s going to be researching local
availability and purchasing from the Ashland Food Coop.

I was recently hired as the Sustainability Intern – I’m determined to hold
Sodexo accountable for their practices and really stir things up! I’ll
mostly be in charge of telling the marketing what to market, but I’d like to
take it one step further and be a real activist. (I’m hoping SOU can be a
pilot campus for the Real Food Calculator, though that’s only been a thought
and I haven’t figured out my approach yet…)

Projects I’ll be working on next term:
- Going trayless
- Promoting “eco-containers” (washable plastic to-go clamshells) and
eliminating bioware from the freshman dorm dining
- Composting bioware from our other dining areas (SO close on getting this
implemented)
- Recycling training for employees & students(?)
- Last, but not least: A STUDENT-RUN GARDEN

Sodexo would like to establish a student garden on campus!!! (We already
have a community garden, but it’s off-limits for Sodexo takeover.) The
initial talk just took place on Thursday 11/19, but it sounds like we have a good
spot of land and we’ll start small with an herb garden in another location
as we work everything out. I’ve offered to take on a coordinator position in
this initial phase, so I have some questions for all of you! I’d appreciate
any personal stories, struggles, ideas, and suggestions if you’ve been
through this process.

MAJOR QUESTIONS:
- Who should be in charge of the garden? (Remember that SOU will probably
not be able to hire a new person and Sodexo may not be here long unless they
rock at this.)
- Where should the labor come from? (Especially over the summer – we have a
Mediterranean climate, meaning it’s HOT and DRY.)
- What are the FIRST steps? (I think we’ve gone so far as identifying
potential areas and will be testing the soil as the next step.)

I’m really just reaching out for any help. With break and finals coming up,
I’m going to be honest and say that I just don’t have as much time as I’d
like to dedicate to researching, but I’m impatient and want to see things
proceed as fast as possible. Email me at sarah.rudeen@gmail.com or leave me
a message on the blog.

Thanks so much RFCers – this is what networking is
all about!

Summit Action 2010 in the Works

Hey All you fine folks out there,

Exciting news on the 2010 NW Regional Real Food Summit front, we have chosen a date and location so get READY for this AWESOME opportunity!

Our location this year will be on the western edge of the Rockies in a quant town called Missoula, Montana - home to the University of Montana and some fabulous food, agriculture and sustainability action. This year’s event will be held on Presidents day weekend (February 13-15) so mark your calendars.

We want to see anyone and everyone who is interested in helping to build a Real Food Economy at their high school, college, university and in their community.

Tell us what your thoughts are on workshops, activities, or maybe just share a great pie recipe right here or email us at northwest@realfoodchallenge.org.

Stay tuned for upcoming information on registration and schedule! We can’t wait to see you there and eat pie together under the big sky.

‘Til than keep it real

Lyra & Katelyn

Nourishing a Local Food System

Good evening, all; it’s Katelyn here, your RFO currently based in Portland, Oregon. In collaboration with a group of Portland State University Students and the Oregon Food Bank, I am helping organize a really nifty dinner event called Nourishing a Local Food System: A Dinner and Discussion, and it’s going to be just that!

We are inviting any and all students, seniors, farmers & farmworkers, community activists, and elected officials to join us in a discussion about our local food system, how we contribute to it, and how we can all improve upon it! And that discussion is going to be complemented perfectly with our local, organic, and very seasonal menu. It’s going to be squashy, it’s going to be awesome!

Check out our fantastic flier: Nourishing a Local Food System

Interested in attending?

RSVP with our friend David Osborn (he was at the NW Real Food Summit last March!), who works with the Oregon Food Bank, at <DOsborn@oregonfoodbank.org> or with us, at <northwest@realfoodchallenge.org>.