While climate change rages ahead, the climate bill is flat on its back and the most progressive green on President Obama's staff looks on the verge of being forced out of office for silly reasons. Let's not talk about healthcare reform or Afghanistan.

 But ... there's an organic veggie garden! On the White House lawn! And a video about it starring the First Lady! Normally, my cynic meter goes haywire over this kind of stuff. I'm allergic to government-produced videos, even ones that feature someone as appeallng as Michelle Obama. Power couple hires team of professional gardeners to plant opulent kitchen garden. Is that really news? But today, I'm biting. People a lot better connected than me swear that the First Lady is dead serious about transforming our dysfunctional, unjust, greenhouse-gas-spewing, downright dangerous food system. And they say she has real influence within the USDA. So, damn it, there's hope!!!!!

And, there's a very concrete opportunity for real change coming up. In the video, Ms. Obama talks about the critical need to give children access to fresh, healthy food. Our current school-food program, with its Tyson chicken nuggets and pancake-wrapped industrial sausages, does an abysmal job of that. School cafeterias have become just another profit center for Big Food--a place to train rising generations the appeal of reheated processed dreck. This month, The Child Nutrition Act, which governs the National School Lunch Program, comes up for reauthorization. What if, instead of serving as a way to line agribiz pockets and dispose of surplus commodities, the Act mandated that federal money for school lunches be used on healthy food and to support local and regional food systems?

Slow Food USA is spearheading a Time for Lunch Campaign to pressure Congress and the White House to transform school lunches. And this coming Labor Day, they're staging "Eat Ins" in cities all across the country to agitate for that cause. Click off your TV--forget Glenn Beck and his slimy provocations. Take hope where you can get it: Get to the farmers market (or your garden), grab some nice ingredients, make something good to eat, and bring it to an Eat In in support of the kids ands their vittles. And while you're at it, get involved with the farm-to-school movement.

During dark times, one way to avoid political despair is to do something concrete. That's a big reason, I think, that the food movement gained so much force during Bush II's reign. And food may now offer the best way to move the progressive agenda forward at a time of political stasis and noisy right-wing populism, with its chilling echoes of the 1930s.

Related Links:

A parable on the National School Lunch Program

Graham, Kerry, ‘will be working closely with the White House’

White House loads policy initiatives into a few hours of fun at Healthy Kids Fair

Carl M via flickrThose of you following our last post (Should Kuba Have a Puppy?) can see that both votes and comments on this question are running 9 to 1 in favor of the gratification of pet ownership. This is even though eco-curmudgeon Ken has made the point, with hard statistics, that keeping domestic animals essentially ensures the death of wild creatures that we would all heartily agree to preserve (indirectly, through habitat loss and overuse of resources).

So what?

Well, the JP Green House is meant to be a demonstration project. We aim to build a zero-carbon house on a low budget, grow veggies and raise chickens for eggs, cut our consumption to a level sustainable for the planet, and make it all public. This means full transparency of finances, building dilemmas, relationship agonies, parenting fiascos, and just the overall messiness of the thing. (Quick house and garden update: Foundation finished, windows and insulation are next, debating exterior options, many radishes, one pumpkin, fabulous dahlias, still short 50k.)

How does the utopian vision jibe with the fact that Kuba wants a puppy, the reality that Ken bought a motorcycle last week, the admission that I am writing this on a 95-degree day in Boston with my window AC blasting?

Are we a demonstration of hypocrisy? Or the immense difficulty of living within our earthly means? I'm afraid we're bound to reveal it all.

Fellow climate-organizer A., who does not own a car and rides his bicycle 12 miles from a prosperous Boston suburb to protests and meetings in our neighborhood, is one of the most sincere environmentalists I know. He writes brilliantly about the failures of major green groups to reckon with the true implications of climate change. He rants inappropriately at meetings, and never avoids calling people on their lifestyle failures. He’s more of a crank than Ken (and that’s saying something). And he smells a little funny.

A. enjoys bugging people. Last week out of the blue he responded to an email I sent from work about the economic crisis by accusing me of ignoring the true ecological disaster. Do you always address people you barely know this way? I snapped back. Basically, his answer was yes. In contrast, I try to walk a tightrope on which I avoid offending anyone by openly criticizing their consumption. I know I might regret my general affability and politeness in twenty years. Geez, we were all too busy to go to those climate protests and write our Congressman before Greenland melted...

I’ll leave you with all this hypocrisy, unresolved in my own mind.

But now for our next poll. I was over at Sue's house around the corner, today, drinking my third cup of coffee and bitching grandly about the past week, which has just been a slugfest for me, when I came up with a brilliant new question.

"How do you think the neighborhood would react if we raised rabbits for food?" I asked Sue. "I love rabbit--we used to eat it in Europe a lot. Delicious with garlic and spinach."

"Around here?! I don’t think so. You’ll have all the vegetarians and vegans picketing by the front door."

"Really? Do people realize where store-bought meat comes from?" I launched into a tirade about factory farming and got the evil eye from Sue, while her ten-year-old daughter turned pale across the room. (Point of fact: Our family is omnivorous, but we currently buy only meat raised humanely and organically on a local farm. We eat it with relish, however, the blood running down our chins. Also, I wish I had a picture of the day Eli ate a raw baby octopus, with the tentacles hanging from his mouth.)

So, the JP Green House question of the week is: Should we raise cute fuzzy bunny rabbits and slaughter them for their meat? Should we make moccasins and baby booties from their skins, sell rabbits-foot keychains for good luck, so as not to waste any usable byproducts?

Well why the heck not? Cause it's mean?

Related Links:

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Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!

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Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

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Dutch treat
Forget cow-tipping. Dutch pranksters are all about car-tipping these days, dumping dozens of lightweight Smart cars into Amsterdam's canals. What tossers!

Image created by The Sun

Keep on truckin'
Giving the Weinermobile (R.I.P. Oscar) a run for its money, the Truck Farm is a CSA on wheels. Talk about teaching an old Dodge new tricks!

Cloudy with a chance of ice cream
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream that teaches us about climate change and emerging nanotechnology.

Monkey business
Guard your gardenias, folks, seems guerilla gorilla gardening is on the rise.

Take that, Once-ler!
He is the Lorax; he speaks for the trees. And soon he'll be doing it in animated 3-D.

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San Francisco to get more urban gardens.  Thanks, Gavin.

And here's a how-to that I look forward to reading.

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The older man with the Coke-bottle lenses at the Boston GreenFest had a simple table -- just a poster with a few pictures taped to it, and a sprig of something green. He looked grim and earnest, and although all the other booths were more alluring, full of enticing pamphlets about new green nonprofits, I went over to talk to him.

"Hey, I know that plant!" I said, picking up the sprig.

Lush looks can be deceiving.It's a dark green vine, with pods that look like small reddish peppers. A variety of Swallow-wort (Vincetoxicum), brought in as an ornamental plant from Ukraine and Russia at the turn of the last century, it's known by several names, including my favorite, "Dog Strangling Vine." In the later summer, the pods burst and millions of white spores float out and reseed.

Once you begin to see it, you find it is everywhere -- a New England kudzu, climbing trees along the highway, creeping along a neighbor's fence, inhabiting every vacant lot. And it dominates the north side of the JP Green House yard, a small hillside with otherwise great potential for terraces of berries. It takes root in any abandoned, neglected space (yep -- that would be us!).

"I've been fighting this stuff all summer," I told him cheerfully. Just the weekend before we had hosted a work-party and ten friends had stripped the hillside of all visible green vines. Uprooting it entirely, however, was almost impossible. It was a rhizome and spread underground.

Invasive Plants Man shook his head wearily and began his tirade. This stuff had to be stopped. If it wasn't contained now it would smother out all the native plants. And the problem was, nobody knew what it was. People looked around and they saw green and thought that all was well. The knowledge of what was native and proper, and what was a ruthless killer, had been lost at least a generation ago.

He talked of his struggles with the upscale town of Brookline, where the seriousness of the threat was not recognized. He gestured despairingly at his fellow tablers: "They don't take this seriously!"

"I take this seriously!" I assured him, slipping into a soothing maternal attitude out of habit, since I'm used to being around worked-up environmentalists.

He reached over and grabbed my arm for emphasis: "It's just you and me against a billion tiny spores!"

Egads!

With roots like these, who needs enemies?I became dutifully obsessed with this Hillside Strangler. I plucked it out of people's yards at parties and presented them with an ominous synopsis of the coming invasion. I Googled late into the night, finding wonderful quotes like this one, from Canadian ecologist Waysel Bakowsky: "We stand to lose our natural ecosystem, all our native plants."

Various methods of conquering the DSV were suggested. You can burn it, soak the seeds in alcohol or gasoline, or boil them. (Why not dynamite, or arsenic? Nuclear radiation?)

Amidst the hysteria, there were a few voices of reason, and I clung to them. Just keep chopping it down, they said -- it will eventually lose heart. And till, till, till the soil, then plant native plants -- tough ones.

It's July, one year later, and we are still at war. Our denuded hillside is covered with ugly blue tarps, through which Ken has hopefully planted raspberries. The DSV bursts through in places -- like the creature in Alien bursting out of its hapless victim's stomach -- looking animate, grotesquely healthy, ready to crawl up your legs. It's also spilling over the sides of the tarp, and displacing the rocks in Simon's rock garden ("Hey, someone moved my rocks!").

I arm myself with our six-foot scythe, and Kuba with the Japanese hedge-trimmers, and we hack off the pods before they burst into those "billion tiny spores." I think I will need to talk to the city before I decide to douse our brush pile with gasoline though.

If only Invasive Plants Man could see me and my 10-year-old putting our anger issues to work so constructively. It's all for love, really. Go raspberries!

Related Links:

Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1

Slideshow: Reinventing the JP Green House

USGBC jobs finds green building to support millions of U.S.jobs

Left behind.coldcolours via flickrIt's Sunday on Bourne Street. I am weeding at the JP Green House, furious at the reappearance of the Dog Strangling Vine that we battled hard last summer. A pernicious creeping vine, it takes over any neglected area around here: East Coast kudzu. An abandoned house is not really vacant, but inhabited by slow destructive forces like rot and weeds. I tackle a few shoots and then, discouraged, turn to watering the melon and pumpkin patch, newly planted two weeks ago. Ken zips by, testing the bikes that he's tuning up after the winter. The young African men at the halfway house next door are riding a pocket motorcycle up and down the street, noisily, over and over again. I contemplate telling them off but decide it's not neighborly.

Our neighbor John has been cleaning out his wife's uncle's house. The uncle died at home around midwinter, ninety-something, and the task of cleaning out 70 years of accumulations fell to John, because he'd recently lost his job as a jewelry salesman. He is 55 and a bit grim about his prospects. Ken has been helping him sort through stuff, and has heard about the "changed balance of power in the marriage" and other predictable outcomes. Our neighborhood is quirky but mostly middle class. Still, you can't swing a cat around here without knocking down somebody freshly unemployed.

John netted us some great trash finds: a Debbie Reynolds paper-doll set with complete outfits; old photographs of the graduating classes of St. Andrew's School, including later-convicted pedophile priest. John wonders if we could sell the last of his uncle's furniture and quaint games and toys at our upcoming yard sale.

I dump the fresh compost on the heap at the back of the garden and give it a few turns. I contemplate planting another bed of wildflowers, but decide to wait until next weekend. Tar-paper has been flying off the Green House since we had the asbestos shingles removed, and showing up all around the neighborhood. I decide it would be good to be seen marching around with a plastic bag, resolutely cleaning up, waving cheerily to neighbors in their yards. I do that for a while, until I'm distracted by a great-looking pile of trash on Catherine Street, a few yards down.

Closer inspection reveals that each bag of trash contains some treasures. In one there are two pairs of boys' winter boots--good ones. In another, beach towels and swimming goggles. An ancient credenza reveals durable plastic cutlery, never used, along with the horror of tupperware containing ancient leftovers. Three wicker baskets in excellent condition reveal a plethora of children's mittens and hats. There's a great bronze planter, a speckled blue and white tin teakettle, and a pair of binoculars in perfect condition that somehow recall my childhood of hiking in the California hills. Someone left in a hurry here. Someone moving out, lease up? Another lost job, or home?

Magic stay-on clothes!Ken WardI call Ken over and we pick through each bag. "It's like Christmas in reverse!" I exclaim. We are joined by one of the Africans, who gives the picked-over trash a glance and then wanders off with his cell phone.

I remember what John said: "I've been unemployed for nine months now. I think people keep expecting this to end, but it seems like it could get worse." He was baffled, worried. I pile all my newfound treasures in the car, dump them out on the front lawn, and sort. I pick up the girl's size-7 snowsuit, a few pink hats, and a pair of pink swimming goggles and bring them down to Sue, who has girls.

We do a lot of trash picking. Ken, especially, will screech his decrepit Volvo to a halt beside any promising curbside pile. He loves old stuff, but recognizes the value of almost anything. Broken electronic equipment can be smashed or taken apart by the boys. Any wood can be kindling. Old photographs help us decipher our surroundings.

There is much joy in a good find, but also lots of opportunities for sarcasm and irritation. We all struggle under the burden of luxury turned to garbage. We lose our jobs and are left without a means of subsistence in the midst of all this excess. We rarely need what we find, and a lot of it gets redistributed to friends and neighbors, to Goodwill, or back to the trash.

Yet I dream of never needing to buy another thing, but just existing under the guidance of this strange trash-karma that brings us whatever we need.

A Sunday-night prayer:

May the Deity of Garbage and Abundance hold John Our Neighbor in his mercy
Along with the family who moved out so quickly
That they left those fabulous 1960s binoculars behind on Bourne Street
Amen.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

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Could. Not. Resist. From NYT's City Room Blog:

The sustainable garden with the most exclusive real estate in Washington is no doubt the one at the White House. The sustainable farm with the most exclusive view in New York City is the one that opened on Governors Island last week.

Oh. Yeah. Governors Island is an island in New York Harbor not far from the Brooklyn waterfront. It was an army base for almost two hundred years and then a Coast Guard base for a few decades after that. It was decomissioned in 2001 and since that time various redevelopment plans have been proposed for it. But this is the best plan yet.

The organic three-acre farm, one of a handful of commercial organic farms within the five boroughs, is a collaboration between the corporation and a Brooklyn nonprofit group called Added Value, which teaches teenagers about sustainable and local food by training them to work on urban farms.

The Governors Island farm is expected to produce tens of thousands of dollars in organic produce annually, and as much as $25,000 this year — mostly though sales at a farm stand and to a soon-to-be-opened Water Taxi Beach on the northern part of the island. Among the offerings, the earliest of which is expected to be ripe in late July, are squash, tomatoes, sunflowers, eggplants and groundcherries (a relative of the gooseberry).

The farm will have close ties to New York Harbor School, which is scheduled to move from Bushwick, Brooklyn, to the island in 2010. The farm will provide produce, and students can volunteer and do science work there.

This is just all good. The more urban gardening the better and what better way to promote it than through such a high-profile project as this -- and the money-making part isn't bad either. Again, that school/farm connection is crucial since putting kids into gardens (i.e. improving education surrounding food and farming) is fundamental to food system reform. Score several for NYC.

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"...we can train ourselves to attend to the beautiful things waiting to be noticed. We can become curious and push the perceptions outward towards the surrounding world and society. We can see the miracle of life around us. We can be altered and saved by the situation in which we find ourselves."  Anne Bogart, Siti Theatre Company

A few years ago, when coal miners stumbled onto a 300 million-year-old fossilized rainforest in a mine in eastern Illinois, the nation was reminded of coal's one-time role in the garden. 

In one of the more creative protests against dirty coal this year, a "Counter Coalture" movement has emerged in southeastern Ohio to take coal back to its place in the garden, and raise awareness about the social impacts of coal mining, washing, burning and disposing on the people who live near active mines and facilities.

The coalition launched its action yesterday, June 7, with a day of protest gardening.

Following the non-violent principles from an Appalachian program called "Opposite Action," the Counter Coalture Coalition launched a website and issued a call for citizens "to plant trees, flowers, houseplants or other forms of vegetation in a united, peaceful protest against the negative impact of coal mining upon our planet. Not simply symbolic, this will provide a real opportunity to remediate part of the negative impact that mining and excessive energy consumption has upon the world. "

As former Ohio State University student and folk legend Phil Ochs once sang: "In such an ugly time, the true protest is beauty."

Some of the first "counter coalture" gardens can be seen at countercoalture.org.

C. Joseph from Harrison County, Ohio writes a dedication: "The side garden has mint, coral bells for the hummingbirds, and some tall, fall asters in the back. My coalture garden is dedicated to my Grandmother who spent her life in dirty, western PA coal towns. She always had a beautiful garden and people would come to photograph it because it was such a blessing to their ugly coal town. Grandma hated the coal dust & the mines ruined her water, but she always tried to create beauty with her garden. Though no one ever smoked, her entire family died of cancer, probably because of the coal mines, dust and polluted water."

Southern Ohio is one of the most coal-burdened regions in the nation.  As Elisa Young in Meigs County in southern Ohio once wrote:

The clock is ticking in Meigs County - we are up against critical challenges to transition our community away from coal toward a healthy, sustainable future, or become a virtually unlivable coal colony. We currently have the highest lung cancer death rate in the state according to the American Cancer Society, despite being a remote, rural, farming community. Harvard studies say we have the shortest live expectancy in the state (our ancestors lived well into their 90's - current life expectancy 70.2), and a recent USA Today report showed that with the VOC's being released by currently existing industry around us we rank in the top 3rd percentile for the worst air quality in the nation. There is a lot of pride in the fact that we generate the electricity that a major area of our country is run from. I believe we can find ways to continue doing that, moving toward energy independence that makes us real leaders in the renewable energy future. That future will be driven by our choice to do so now, or by necessity when that last lump of coal has been drilled, blasted and drug out from beneath us in Appalachia. It's a choice, and we need your help and support. I'm not against jobs or generating energy, but I do believe every dollar we throw to sequester into that bottomless clean coal pit is a dollar kept from from moving us toward a truly clean, healthy, sustainable future for our children and grandchildren.

Here's a clip from "Coal Ties," a documentary that explores one town's connection to its southern coal counties:

Related Links:

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Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

Is it better to use a gas-spewing grinder/chipper to mulch up yard waste for plant beds or just burn it? I am thinking you will be tempted to say do neither and let it rot in place, but many don't have a big enough yard to leave piles of leaves, sticks, and branches lying around for years.

Steve W.
Waynesville, N.C.

A. Dearest Steve,

Ah, it's not a simple as either/or. Your county or state may have rules prohibiting the burning of brush and yard waste. Look on the EPA Backyard Burning pages to get started on the rules in North Carolina or other states. Burning non-vegetative trash, I remind us all, is always a no-no.

If your only two choices are burning or gas-powered chipping, then I say go for gas-powered chipping. Today's column does not end there, however. We can think of a variety of ways to wiggle out of the rock and hard place.

Destroying the evidence.One is to rent or buy an electric chipper. These are generally smaller and less powerful than a gas-powered chipper, but in my brief research on the matter (i.e., do these things actually do the job? yes), I found that a decent one should shred leaves and chip branches up to 1.5 to 2 inches. Two brands seemed to rise to the top in internet chat: the McCullough and the Patriot. They are available for internet purchase, but whether you yourself will be able to find a rental one is unknown.

It's possible to reduce the amount of electricity/gas consumed by any shredder by reducing the amount of stuff needing chipping. You could, of course, achieve this by letting your yard go to the dogs and never pruning, raking, or tidying. But there are less drastic steps. Unchopped deciduous leaves make an excellent mulch for ornamental beds year-round and for vegetables during the winter. A machete is handy for chopping smaller, non-woody items; pile the stuff atop a tarp and hack away until everything is smaller or your blisters get bad. Then mound it all into a four-by-four compost pile, add water, and turn it over weekly for a month. Larger pieces of burnable wood can be set aside to cure for a woodstove, if you or a friend use one to heat your home (I know very little about life in North Carolina, in case that isn't already obvious).

What else ... sculpture? Woven fencing? Bean teepees? I welcome suggestions.

Mulchily,
Umbra

Related Links:

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Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

Turn your turkey carcass into a spectacular gumbo

South Central Farm activist Kati Lopez with armload of fresh corn leaves.Black Valley FilmsJust how much trouble can one community garden start? For starters, three years of court proceedings, two eviction notices, one assault charge, countless allegations of corruption, and $16 million worth of fundraising. Even with all the legal crap, the gardeners still had to pay for manure.

Scott Hamilton Kennedy's Oscar-nominated documentary, "The Garden," tells the story of a 14-acre plot in Los Angeles that became a community garden in 1992, a community-building effort undertaken in the wake of the Rodney King riots. For 12 years, the South Central Farm operated in relative peace on city-owned property, providing lots for 347 predominantly Latino families, and laying claim to the title of "the largest community garden in the country." Not bad for a city known more for its traffic congestion than its open spaces.

But in late 2003, in a closed-door session, the L.A. City Council sold the property to a real estate developer for $5 million. The buyer promptly posted eviction notices at the garden, effective in February 2004. But instead of packing it all in, the South Central Farmers decided to fight the property sale for their right to grow food in that space.

At this point in the narrative, the film starts to be less about the need for urban community gardens and more about the particular brand of corrupt politics in L.A. that was willing tSouth Central Farm with L.A. skyline in background.Black Valley Filmso sacrifice the garden for money, storage units, and soccer fields (yes, soccer fields, you'll have to watch the film to understand). Kennedy includes many shots of smiling gardeners tending to their plots, but provides little substance about the value that a garden can bring to a community.

And other than a bit of he-said-she-said back-and-forth between the South Central Farmers and the Concerned Citizens of L.A. (proponents of the soccer fields), we don't have any information about how the greater community felt about the garden. Were the South Central Farmers even from that neighborhood? The audience doesn't know.

What we do know is that the South Central Farm became a cause célèbre for the Hollywood crowd. Joan Baez and Willie Nelson visited, and Daryl Hannah lived in a tent at the farm for a little while. And, of course, politicians tried to bask in the limelight; Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich came in for a last-minute fundraiser and photo-op.

What struck me as most fascinating about The Garden, is that if the legal face-off had taken place in 2008 instead of 2004, I imagine the public outcry would have been much more intense. It's hard to imaging that city officials would taking away free access to local food now, when a) Los Angeles is struggling more than ever to feed its citizens, and b) the politics of food has exploded in the public consciousness.

Regardless of The Garden's timeliness, Kennedy's tour de force of the political injustices inflicted on the South Central Farm can be seen as the "Who Killed the Electric Car?" of the community garden set. There simply isn't a better case study for budding community-garden activists. And even if you aren't of the activist persuasion, The Garden is well worth the $10 and 80 minutes it will take to learn the fate of L.A.'s South Central Farm.

Watch It: The Garden is showing at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 30. Check the SIFF schedule for details. For readers outside of Seattle, the film is still being shown around the country; check the Black Valley Films website for details on those screenings.

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Take a bite out of summer.It’s Memorial Day weekend! Say hello to the long, hot days of summer and goodbye to all the rest. However you celebrate this seasonal turning point, we’ve got advice for making it just a bit greener.

First, we hoist the flag with Umbra, who tells us how to be proud patriots 24 hours a day.

Now for the juicy stuff: Planning a cookout? Check out Umbra’s quick ‘n’ easy advice on eco-friendly grilling (quicker still: chuck the charcoal) and these illuminating BBQ FAQs. If you know how to fuel your fire but can’t decide what to cook, here are a few ideas on grilling without red meat and a cookbook or two to inspire.

Before you head out to buy watermelons and Not Dogs, check out our tips on prioritizing organic purchases, washing produce, and what those codes on produce really mean. And read Lou Bendrick’s beefy take on the real impacts of meat production.

Worried about bug bites? Check out our buzzworthy review of DEET-free bug repellents and read this rundown on eco-friendlier insect repellents and sunscreens. Be sure to keep an eye out for our brand-new test of eco-sunscreens, coming in early June.

And if you’re using this weekend as a chance to spruce up your grounds, check out our ideas for lawn alternatives, advice on fertilizers, and tips for the best way to water.

Finally, a verging-on-earnest note: we know Memorial Day is about more than cookouts and bug bites. But we don’t have many links to offer on the topic of sacrificing young lives in faraway lands. Still, we hope you’ll take a moment this weekend to thank the men and women who made your vegan sausagefest possible.

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Use our pesticide, or the spinach gets it.I'm no expert on the mafia, but I have seen the first two Godfather movies and Goodfellas, oh, a few times. One thing I've learned: "protection" is a major mob racket. It works like this: a thug drops by your shop monthly and makes small talk. You hand him some cash, and your shop runs smoothly. You refuse to pay, and ... things go wrong.

I've been thinking about protection rackets ever since an agrichemical industry group chided Michelle Obama for not using "crop protection" products on her White House garden. The group famously wrote a letter (intercepted by Jill of La Vida Locavore) urging the First Lady to do so back in March.

I just found out that Croplife.org, the industry's Web site, also launched a "letter writing campaign" among members. "The garden is a great idea and the photo op of the First Lady and local elementary schoolchildren digging up the ground was precious," the campaign informs Croplife readers. But ... "did you realize that it will be an organic garden?"

An organic garden--one that fails to utilize the agrichem industry's products? That simply won't do:

What message does that send the general public about the agriculture industry that the majority of you are so proud to serve? What message does that send to the non-farming public about an important and integral part of growing safe and abundant crops to feed and clothe the world -- crop protection products?

So Croplife urges members to drop a line to Ms. Obama:

I hope that you will take a moment to consider how important that message is to your livelihood, your passion for agriculture, and your growers' future -- and send your own letter, sharing the benefits of modern, conventional agriculture. Help allay any fears by providing a specific example of how what you do on a daily basis, including custom application and/or the sale of crop protection products and fertilizers, has saved a crop and/or improved yields to benefit more Americans.

So far, the First Lady seems to be holdiing out on using "crop protection." Does that mean that some really scary insects are going to come eat her spinach?

Related Links:

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White House loads policy initiatives into a few hours of fun at Healthy Kids Fair

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Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

Google is replacing lawn mowers with goats. I've seen commenters make some interesting points (What is the impact of raising the goats? Transporting the goats? Watching goat poo run off into the Bay?). So what gives: is this a good idea? Is there a better one, like eliminating all that grass in the first place?

Christopher M.
Vermont

A. Dearest Christopher,

It's a great idea. You tell me: would you rather look out your office window at a riding lawn mower or at a herd of goats? And which would you rather hear as you lounge over breakfast on Saturday, baaaaa or rrrrummmmrrr? Not that visual and aural preference should dictate environmental actions. There are other good reasons to use goats for mowing.

The first and most significant is that gas-powered lawn mowers are polluting monsters. Mow for an hour or drive your car for four hours: the emissions are equal. Mowers have been largely unregulated with few emissions controls, although all that will change as of 2012, when new emissions standards for small spark-ignition engines take effect. The new rules will hopefully provide a 35 percent reduction in hydrocarbon emissions, lower evaporative emissions, and hence less ozone and greenhouse gas formation as a result of all that grass cutting.

Goats are ruminants, and emit methane as part of the enteric fermentation that occurs in their first "stomach," the rumen. In 2003, according to the EPA, U.S. goats emitted 0.3 Teragrams CO2 equivalent of methane emissions. By comparison, landfills emitted 131.2 Tg, termites about 20 Tg, and mobile sources 2.7 Tg. Goats are not blameless, but they are better than lawn mowers. And termites!

Lawn mowing is perhaps the wrong image. Goats would keep a lawn short, yes, but they also love all those plants we don't want -- and Google appears to be using them not on a lawn, but in weedy fields. Goats easily and happily eat a huge variety of invasive and noxious plants down to the nub. They are browsers, not grazers, and have a famously catholic diet. Blackberry and poison ivy are just two examples of plants unwanted by humans and munched by goats.

Google is not the first to prefer goats over machines: Many goat herders are renting out their goats for landscape renovation and maintenance. Goat herds are used to maintain areas alongside airplane runways, to remove scrub in fire-prone areas, and to replace pesticides in weed eradication on ranches. They do all this and more without the impact of heavy equipment or the fallout from effective, deadly herbicides. Their byproducts provide fertilizer, their hooves stomp it in, all this while Heidi yodels your favorite tunes. What is not to love.

Rent goats for your own landscape if you wish, but don't start raising goats at home until you've done some serious research.

Advisorily,
Umbra

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Jon Stewart had two green-related segments last night.

First was an interview with EPA administrator Lisa Jackson:

The second was a hilarious Samantha Bee bit on Michelle Obama's organic garden and Big Ag's opposition to it:

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It’s Tax Day, and since our eco-advice on that front is pretty straightforward (save paper and file online!), we thought we’d focus instead on the other event that’s brewing. Unless you’ve been ignoring cable news altogether for the past few weeks, you already know that lots of people plan to gather at “tea parties” to protest high taxes and government spending.

In the spirit of this (completely wacked) day, we thought we’d offer an eco-tip to the beleaguered politicians receiving tea bags in the mail, and to those who might be gathering tea bags as props for the media: Don’t toss those tea bags in the garbage.  For the most part, tea bags—which, as our own Umbra has pointed out, are a perfect example of our throwaway culture—are compostable!

We hope Michelle Malkin, Grover Norquist, and all our pals over at Fox News shopped for tea that comes in unbleached bags, as this handy fact sheet advises. And we hope they avoided bags with staples in them, to keep more metal bits out of the ol’ compost bin. We suppose we should give a shout-out to the yahoos who set up a page that lets people send virtual tea bags, since it’s much less wasteful.

But for those who have a handful they don’t know what to do with, there are plenty of uses for used tea bags. According to ehow.com, tea bags are great liners for potted plants, helping retain moisture and prevent soil from falling out through the various drainage holes. If the Obamas get enough of them, maybe they can make compost for their new garden.

So, er, happy tea bag day. And bottoms up!

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Q. Dear Umbra,

I am constructing a garden bed for a local preschool and am considering the various materials I could use. The beds need to be raised and protected by a rigid border. This has aroused two main concerns: the safety of the children and the durability of the materials. I feel the best long-term way to keep large splinters out of tiny hands would be to use the plastic/wood composite decking. However, I have reservations about the volatility of the material, though the EPA report says it is safe. I have read that the Polyolefins in the composite are mostly inert, but am concerned, as the garden may be used for vegetables. Have you any related information?

Thanks a bunch,
Richard G.
North Carolina

How does your garden grow?iStock

A. Dearest Richard,

I'm a big fan of wood for raised beds, and part of me wants to reassure you that there are ways to get around splinters. If you purchased planks that were slightly finished, for instance, it would be more expensive than rough planks, but the splinter index would go down. Also, kids can learn to handle garden tools without beaning their friends, so surely they can learn to be near wood without getting endless splinters.

My reasons for preferring wood are hardly scientific. Children are learning to touch the soil and raise plants, and for me that experience should be mediated through a natural material. Which one? Well, cedar is long lasting but expensive, pine is cheap and first to rot. Whatever wood you chose, the beds would not last quite as long as the fake wood. But I personally dislike the texture of plastic lumber -- I don't find it welcoming. If you think this aesthetic revulsion sounds crazy, then perhaps it is only my pet peeve.

My little anti-plastic moment aside, the wood-plastic composite "lumber" does appear to get good marks from all the resources I checked with: extension offices, state governments, safe playground advocacy groups, agriculture advisors. The plastics used (often HDPE, or recycled materials) are apparently non-leaching. They are solid, long-lasting, and easy to work with.

A couple of other notes for all ye out there building raised beds for any purpose: do not use wood treated with Chromated Copper Arsenate (you shouldn't have access to buying it new anyway). Although there are treated lumber products on the market that do not contain arsenic and are less toxic, I would also eschew these. The newer preservatives are understood to be less toxic, but I say why risk it. Also, avoid railroad ties, which may have been treated with creosote.

Other than plastic lumber and wood, good materials for raised beds include cement blocks and broken sidewalk pieces, which you would get from your public works department, not from jackhammering your sidewalk. 'Tis the season for raised bed building, and may it be a merry season for all.

Soily,
Umbra

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What struck me in Frances Moore Lappé's piece at Yes! on Belo Horizonte, Brazil -- the city that ended hunger -- was how simple the solution was:

And the cost? $10 million for a city of 2.5 million. Granted, that figure isn't adjusted for US purchasing power -- but it represented a mere 2 percent of the city budget (and Belo probably has a much smaller/simpler budget than NYC). Also, note the focus on school lunches (sound familiar?) and the way the city directly subsidized purchases of fruit and vegetables.

Granted, Belo's efforts focus on malnutrition, while we in the developed world must attack the two-headed monster of hunger AND obesity. On the other hand, Belo's policies would likely conquer both. Still, this Brazilian city provides hard evidence that you can address underlying social ills when you localize urban food systems and promote healthy eating. That is very good news indeed.

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