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February 2012 A Community Garden and Outdoor Learning Center in Lafayette By Lafayette Community Garden Advisory Group Thanks to donations from scores of generous community members and the dedication of a large number of volunteers during the past three years, a Lafayette Community Garden and Outdoor Learning Center will be constructed during 2012. The goals of the garden are to provide a site for community members to: • Collaboratively grow vegetables and native plants, using sustainable gardening practices, • Learn about the flora and fauna of our local, riparian ecosystem and how best to preserve our beautiful habitat, and • Have a central space where food that is grown in individual Lafayette gardens can be brought and distributed. The advisory group welcomes all community members to become involved in the creation of this community space. Groundbreaking will occur during February on the three acre site owned by EBMUD. The site is adjacent to the Lafayette Filter Plant on Mt. Diablo Boulevard, across from the Lafayette Reservoir. Plans for the site include a parking area and fenced garden and education areas. The site will be “off the grid,” with the electricity for the water pump provided by solar panels. Talented, enthusiastic Leah Ingram has been hired to be the garden manager. Leah is a graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Landscape Architecture program and holds minors in land rehabilitation, soils science, and sustainable environments. She is looking forward to working with the community to make what is now a relatively unattractive parcel of land one that is rich, productive, and beautiful. A Lafayette Garden and Outdoor Learning Center Open House is tentatively being planned for Earth Day, April 22, from 1 -3pm. Between now and then, we hope to do the building! Volunteer groups will be invited to help build beds, sheds and tables and move soil. Community members will also be asked to donate usable tools. Fifty members/families will be chosen to collaboratively grow vegetables and learn to farm sustainably during the growing season. Community members who do not have access to gardening are particularly encouraged to become involved. If you are interested in being one of the pilot garden members, go to the garden website, www.LafayetteCommunityGarden.org and click on the membership button. More information about the project can also be found at the website or by emailing janet@sustainablelafayette.org.
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Serving the Lafayette Community Teen Esteem By Fran Miller The statistics are startling. If a teen begins drinking at age 15, he or she has a 40% chance of becoming an alcoholdependent adult; 67% of these 15 year-old drinkers will experiment with elicit drugs. Alcohol, which can affect the natural development of the teen brain, is implicated in the top three causes of teen fatalities. And, one out of two eighth graders have experimented with alcohol. The pressures faced by today’s youth can often lead to risky behaviors such as underage and binge drinking, drug use, prescription drug abuse, and sexual activity. And, the limited reasoning skills of an under-developed adolescent brain often lead to perilous choices, made without regard to consequences. The high-risk behavior of today’s youth requires the watchful eye and guidance of not only parents, but also community members and neighbors.
See Teen continued on page 21
Feral Kevin
By Fran Miller
Long before sustainable food guru Michael Pollan wrote his best seller The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which he explored the complex subject of the industrialization of our food sources, a young and quixotic Kevin Feinstein was slightly ahead of the curve. As a college student at Florida State, Feinstein privately questioned the same subjects as related to the nation’s commercial food chain. With access to a relatively new information highway – the Internet – Feinstein Googled his way through the complex issues of agribusiness and in-turn, re-programmed how he felt about our food system. Feinstein was a film major excelling in the technical aspects of his field of study. He assumed a career path in film would eventually lead him to California, but it was his transformation of consciousness, and the progressive food movement, which ultimately brought him to the state eleven years ago. Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, Feinstein, who now lives in Walnut Creek, had become accustomed to non-organic ways of eating. “We never had fruit, and I’d never seen a fruit tree,” says Feinstein. “Once in college, and with a myriad of
See Kevin cont. on pg. 24
Volume V I- Number 2 3000F DANVILLE BLVD #117 ALAMO, CA 94507 Telephone (925) 405-6397 Fax (925) 406-0547 editor@yourmonthlypaper.com Alisa Corstorphine ~ Publisher
Kevin Feinstein, "Feral Kevin," displays a bounty of both edible and toxic mushrooms. His mushroom foraging classes explain how to tell the difference between the two.
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