LEAF Night: week four

More beautiful produce, complements of City Fresh and LEAF.  What is LEAF?  To find out check out this post.

LEAF Night; week three

Today was our third week participating in the CSA program City Fresh here in Lakewood, Ohio. Above is a picture of the single share that Jon picked up this afternoon and consists of one bunch each of lemon balm, mint, garlic scapes, and green onions plus a pound of peas and a bag of popcorn.

For more information on CSA programs, City Fresh and LEAF, check out this post.

LEAF Night, week two

Today was our second week participating in the CSA program City Fresh here in Lakewood, Ohio. Above is a picture of the single share that we picked up this afternoon. It was a beautiful day so we rode to the library on our bikes where we picked up our produce. Our single share fits perfectly in my new bike basket which consisted of one bunch each of mint, radishes, garlic scapes, bokchoy, and green onions plus a pint of strawberries (my favorite) and 8 oz of maple syrup. Since we have a TON of mint growing in our back yard we traded it at the barter table for an extra bunch of garlic scapes. Apparently, a lot of other people are growing mint too, as 99% of the barter table had little baggies of mint on it. For more information on CSA programs, City Fresh and LEAF, check out this post.

As a reminder, there’s a lot of great stuff going on the next few days at Crafty Goodness including Drop In And Craft tomorrow (Thursday), Craftapalooza on Friday, and the Ears to You Earring Benefit on Saturday. Click on the links for more details.

The Rambling Crafter; WWOOF Hawaii

The Rambling Crafter series is back and this time I’m talking about my experience with WOOFF Hawaii back in January, 2008.  For those of you loyal readers, you may remember that I recently eluded to this trip in my DIY Dress Redo post earlier this month.

What is WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms)?

The mission of WWOOF is to help educate the world about how to live sustainably and organically within a community of like-minded individuals.

WWOOF is a way to broaden your education and practical experience, learn about organic gardening and farming, and meet new people.  It is also a great way to travel in Hawaii on 5 main Islands at over 200 farm hosts (and a vast array of different places). You help 4-6 hours a day, 5 – 5 1/2 days per week and receive accommodations, meals and a very interesting experience.

WWOOF Aims*

• to get firsthand experience of organic farming & gardening and to lend a helping hand wherever needed
• to get into the countryside of Hawaii and Hawaiian culture.
• to help the organic movement, which is often labour intensive and does not rely on artificial fertilizers & pesticides.
• to make contact with other people in the organic movement.
• to have a wonderful enriching experience.
• to enable people from all over the world to have a cultural exchange.

*Taken directly from the WWOOF Hawai’i website.

During the process of researching WWOOF we learned that it is a program for all levels of experience.  We had no experience at all with farming or even gardening.  While some farms do require prior experience for working on their farms, others don’t require any, so it was just a matter of contacting those farms and feeling out which one we thought we’d like to work with, and which ones could accommodate our schedule for when we could travel.

We eventually found Josanna’s Garden in Kapoho on the Big Island.

Garden is a good name for this place, as it is only about 3 acres.  Though small in size, it produces a wide variety of fruits and vegetables including; lilikoi (passion fruit), papaya, bananas (silk fig, Mexican apple, lady finger, ice cream), avocado, ruby red grapefruit, sweet white grapefruit, pommelo, breadfruit, Mountain apples, star apples, meyers lemons, bumpy lemons, sour sop, rombuton, navel oranges, rollinia, tangerines, tahitian limes, guava, egg fruit, mamey sapote, coconuts, french green beans, yellow ginger, turmeric, white or greater galangal, red galangal, starfruit, jackfruit, and more!!

Breadfruit (above) looks prickily on the outside, but is actually very squishy and delicate.  To harvest it, one person cuts the stem from the tree with a saw attached to a very long stick while two other people wait below with a stretched out bed sheet.  The bed sheet cushions it’s fall and prevents it from splaterring on the ground.  The conssistancy of this fruit is like pudding.

While most of the produced grown on Josanna’s Garden was available for sale only at the farms’ small road-side stand (below), the various types of ginger were shipped to the other Hawaiian islands, and maybe even the main land.

Here’s a good view of the farm from a gently sloped field of freshly planted galangal.

And here is another small plot of ginger that was recently weeded.  Though galangal takes about 13 weeks to mature, the farm has many small plots of it  that are planted at different time so that it may be harvested year round.  Though our stay on the farm was just three weeks we were able to participate in each stage of galangal production; planting, maintaining (weeding/mulching/fertilizing with organic compost), and harvesting.

Below, Jon stands in front of large piles of cut veggitation which will be used in composting.  Piles of compost that are farther along can be seen in the distance next to the banana plants.  Ironically, Jon’s shirt says, “I dig dirt.”  Composting is a large and important part of organic farming.

In addition to the ginger and many exotic fruits sold by the farm, there was also a plot of land reserved for growing vegetables specifically for the WWOOF volunteers.   Below is the fenced in WWOOF garden and its handmade sign.

When you become a WWOOFer and volunteer on a farm you are given accommodations by your hosts.  These accommodations vary from farm to farm.  Most hosts provide a spare bedroom, some a separate cabin, some their RV or a trailer/camper, while some can only offer tenting sites.  In the case of Josanna’s Garden, each volunteer or volunteer couple, were given a separate cabin.  Some of these cabins were newer and nicer, while others were a bit more shabby.  The basic rule at this farm was that new volunteers were given whatever space was available at the time they arrived and as volunteers left you could switch if you’d like, so if you stay for a long time you could pretty much get the pick of where you want to stay.  Below is the room that Jon and I shared.  Though you can’t really tell from this picture, it is actually connected to the barn, but since it has its own entrance felt very much like a separate cabin.  Most of the cabins on Josanna’s Garden were not wired for electricity (which was solar-powered), but since our room connected with the barn we did actually have a light bulb which was pretty nice.

Directly to the right of our door was an over hang that protected an array of hand tools used daily by us volunteers.

This volunteer had been on the farm for a long time when we arrived and didn’t have any plans of when he would be leaving so he asked the hosts if they would allow him to build himself a tree house. He started the project right around the time we arrived and as you can see from the picture below he got pretty far along after three weeks.

We traveled very light for our trip so everyday after work we would take off our work cloths and hang them up in the porch area of our room.  We didn’t bother to wash them while we were there because it was so humid that they wouldn’t have dried in time for us to wear them again.  Now that I look back on the experience, it was a good preparation in some ways to the way we would live in Peace Corps. 

It wasn’t all work on Hawaii either.  We did get two days off a week which we used to explore as much as possible.  This was a bit difficult because the farm was a bit secluded and away from any town.  There was a free public bus that we utilized a few times, but in this part of the country hitch hiking is still common and for the most part safe (though I would never recommend hitch hiking alone), which is how we usually got around.  One time we hitched all the way to Hilo and back (60 mile round trip).  We never just stood at corners waiting for a ride, but would instead walk along the busy highway with our thumbs out.  Below is a picture of me walking along with my new ukulele in hand and thumb out.

The farm is located near the eastern coast of the Big Island, where jagged lava rocks meet the ocean and create tide pools.

At the very end of our trip we rented a car for a couple of days so that we could see more of the Big Island, including Volcano National Park.  It was very awesome to see active volcano’s, though there weren’t any lava flows while we were there.  We learned that volcano’s can be pretty toxic, and stinky to

Though I haven’t talked about everything concerning our trip to Hawaii and our experience as WWOOF volunteers, I hope that this post has given you a better understanding of the WWOOF program.  If you have been wanting to learn more about organic farming I strongly encourage you to look into this program.  The WWOOF program in Hawaii is nice because you get to see Hawaii while you learn, but remember that WWOOF stands for world wide opportunities on organic farms, so if you can’t travel all the way to Hawaii there are other options.

If you’ve enjoyed this post please like zween on Facebook so that you wont miss future stories of travel and adventure.

LEAF Night, week one

Above is what our single share in the CSA program, City Fresh, looks like.  So for dinner tonight we made ourselves gigantic salads using some of the greens, rosemary, green onions, and garlic scraps.  We also added some carats, and apple that we had from Trader Joe’s as well as a few fresh basil leaves from our own garden.  We ate a few of the strawberries too.  Those were nice and tart, just how I like them!  For more information on CSA programs, City Fresh, and LEAF, check out my post from one week ago here.  It includes an overview of what these things are as well as links to the different websites in case you are interested in participating in the near future.

Spring Fest 2011

Today I had the pleasure of attending the First Annual Spring Fest on the front steps of the Lakewood Public Library.  As far as I can tell, LEAF (Lakewood Earth And Food) put on the Spring Fest event, which included a plant swap, hands on activities for children, local craft venders, Local food venders (cheese and honey) and a sampling of local restaurants.

But what is LEAF?

“LEAF is dedicated to the development of a more sustainable, healthful and economically viable community through environmentally responsible actions producing broad access to fresh, local foods, knowledge and culture.”

Every Wednesday Lakewood Earth And Food hosts LEAF Night Market (similar to Spring Fest) at the Lakewood Public Library which is the pickup location for several CSA (community supported agriculture) programs.  The program that Jon and I are participating in this year is called City Fresh.

City Fresh works with 16 local farmers to bring shares of produce to people throughout Cuyahoga and Lorain counties. LEAF Community volunteers work with City Fresh employees to manage the Lakewood Fresh Stop.

Chris (above left) was kind enough to explain to us how the process of picking up our produce on LEAF Nights will work.

How the program works: (taken directly from the LEAF website)
Shareholders are required to pre-pay for shares at least 1 week ahead. Low-income shareholders receive a discount. The price for the regular income shares is slightly padded to subsidize the low-income share cost and some administrative expenses. Ohio Direction Card is proudly accepted.  The program will run for approximately 20 weeks. Delivery will be weekly at LEAF Nights (Wednesdays a the Lakewood Public Library) starting on June 8th.

Jon and I are very excited about getting fresh, locally grown veggies on a weekly basis throughout the summer.  It’s something that we wanted to do when we lived in Sandusky, but since the farmers market was on Saturdays, we were never able to make it due to our jobs.

The following are some more photos I took today at Spring Fest.

mmmm…honey!

These are super fun and tasty! It’s like a liquid pixie stix!

Plant Swap!

Cheese from Lake Erie Creamery. This creamery is located in Cleveland and distributes all over this area, including the Catawba Island Club, right down the street from where I grew up!  Unfortunately, we weren’t in the market for any cheese this week, but the Goat Feta was really good and the young couple watching over this booth were super nice.  We were told that Lake Erie Creamery will have a booth at LEAF Nights every other week, so we’ll have to get some cheese next time around.

Robin of The T-Shirt Diaries.  Robin is an eco-friendly mom who makes really great upcycled clothing.  You can find some of Robin’s creations at my favorite local handmade shop, Crafty Goodness!

Puppies! LEAF Night is a dog friendly venue, as we saw many furry friends this evening. As you can see, these little guys really liked Robin’s booth too!

If you are in the Lakewood area I hope you come out the a LEAF Night in the future (every Wednesday from 5:30-8pm for the next 20 weeks).

For more news about events like this, like zween on facebook!