Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Announcing: Regional CSA Conference

By: David Lynch

A statewide initiative on community supported agriculture (CSA) is being launched to bring together CSA producers and other farmers who are interested in the CSA model. Four state regions have been pinpointed for regional gatherings and will be conducted this spring to begin drawing together the Colorado CSA network. Guidestone and the Colorado Food Shed Alliance are collaborating to organize an event to include producers from the Arkansas River Watershed and the San Luis Valley. This is an exciting opportunity to promote practice of local food production and stimulate farmers to pursue the CSA business model. These regional meetings are being held to define the topics that will shape an agenda for a larger statewide gathering anticipated in 2010. The following plan is now set for our regional CSA event:

Date: February 15, Sunday
Location: Weathervane Farm
Time: 10 am to 4 pm

The agenda will include an introductory circle to learn about the regional CSA operations; a survey will be conducted to summarize the features of the CSA movement in the region. A potluck lunch and tour of the farm will follow. Two significant discussions will fill out the rest of the day:

1. Challenges and rewards of the CSA model
2. Directions for the future CSA movement

This will be a time of sharing and building our CSA community. CSA producers have long valued the opportunity to talk of their experiences, gather mutual support and learn from one another.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Movie Review: Wall-E

Written by: Eric Belsey

One of the joys of living with housemates is that they often bring cultural products to one’s attention that otherwise would have been missed. This was my experience with the first Men in Black movie; I dismissed it out of hand as some big-budget Hollywood blockbuster with little redeeming value. Then someone said, no, you have to see it. And I was pleasantly surprised by its creative humor.

Wall-E has followed the same trajectory for me. I saw the previews, and thought, oh, the mouse over at Disney/Pixar has made a cute little massive budget animated film about a lonely robot. Luckily, Cait bought a copy of the DVD, and while holding down the fort around here during the holidays, I popped it in our player.

Wall-E is slick, aesthetically intense and well-crafted, yet the movie carries an overt pro-farming and anti-consumerist message. Without revealing too much, basically the movie follows current trends in consumption to their logical conclusion: the death of the Earth’s capacity to sustain life. Humanity is choking on garbage, and so a spaceship is launched to preserve humankind in space while robots clean up our mess. Hijinks ensue.

Pay attention to the music when the credits roll; that’s Peter Gabriel, singing a great tune he wrote for the movie called Down to Earth (available on iTunes!) which extols the virtues of returning to a life lived closely with Nature. While there are times, as with any movie, when doubt must be suspended, I highly recommend this film for all ages.