Searching beneath our feet, working with our hands, and moving from the heart.

Do you ever wonder why lawns sit empty? Have you looked at your neighbors' yards or pieces of the park and thought, "What else could be there?"

I know I often think about what it would be like to see stands of maples, oaks, walnuts, and cherry trees where sprawling lawns sit. And other times I envision lawns surrounded by wildflower meadows where bees and butterflies dance. Or I see beds of rich loam with intermingled vegetables in rows arranged in beautiful arrangements with compost chambers, piles of leaves, and jumbled pile of hand tools.

Do you wonder what it would be like to be invited into that place if it isn't your property? Or what if the people who owned the garden asked you to eat some produce by just putting out there for you? Or what if you wanted to do it with your own lawn but weren't sure where to begin? Maybe all you want is a beautiful place that nurtures your spirit and gives you peace of mind and, you hope, a smile to others. A food commons. A beauty commons. A peaceful commons.

Today's guests are taking some of those ideas and feelings and bringing them to life. Dana Stuchul started something she calls Veggie Commons, "is to join together (as kids, teens, beginning farmers and gardeners, dwellers, and elders) in the cultivation, harvest, and enjoyment of wholesome, locally nurtured food. Utilyzing food, labor, land, and love, we endeavor to fortify our community, transforming lawnscapes into foodscapes." [Garden pictured at right.] Dana, like our previous guests Asher Miller of the Post Carbon Institute, Katherine Watt of Spring Creek Homesteading and formerly of the Transition Town Initiative, is something of radical re-localizer. There is great promise in meaningful work with the land, something our mechanized and digitized society has lost but can regain through work in the commons.

And maybe you want to take a crack at creating your beautiful space but aren't sure where to begin. Woody Wilson has started Home Grown Farms (Facebook page here), a company that designs, installs, and manages residential and company gardens in State College. Wilson says, "Home Grown Farms bridges the gap between where food is grown and where people consume it."

Both are grounded (pardon the pun) in a love of our place, love of the land, and the possibility of local resilience. Rather than fret and kvetch about sprawl, climate change, peak oil, and the destructive nature of our stuffing and starving food system, they have gotten their hands dirty. Quite literally, this is labor of love and labor for love.

Dana posted the words of Ivan Illich on the Veggie Commons blog a few days ago. He said,

As philosophers, we search below our feet because our generation has lost its grounding in both soil and virtue. By virtue, we mean that shape, order and direction of action informed by tradition, bounded by place, and qualified by choices made within the habitual reach of the actor; we mean practice mutually recognized as being good within a shared local culture that enhances the memories of a place.

What is happening here with Dana and Woody? What if more of us recognized and nurtured our relationship with the soil to which all terrestrial life owes its existence?

So join us today on the Lion 90.7 fm. As always, feel free to call in (814) 895-9577 with comments and questions. You can also find us on Facebook where you can post articles and interact with other SN listeners and readers or join us on Twitter at SustainNowRadio.

Farmers markets in full swing

June means that the farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSA) are in full swing. If you are looking for fresh local produce, local meats, eggs, cheeses, or milk, fresh cut flowers, honey, or a nice place to spend some of your afternoon, go to the local markets.

In the Centre Region we have several markets within about 25 miles of State College each week:

• Tuesdays: Boalsburg Farmers Market at the Pennsylvania Military Museum and State College Farmers Market on Locust Lane
• Thursday: Huntingdon at Portstown Park
  
• Friday: State College on Locust Lane and Philipsburg on Main Street
  
• Saturday: North Atherton in State College at Home Depot, Bellefonte at the Gamble Mill, Millheim Farmers Market, and Philipsburg
  
• Last Saturday of the summer months Village on the Green Market in Julian, PA
  

If you want to find farmers markets and farms near you, use the search feature at the Buy Fresh Buy Local page through the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture website. It's also a great way to get in touch with your local growers to see about buying weekly shares of food that can be delivered to market for you. Or if you just want local flavors served up for you in beers or meals, restaurants and bakeries can be found too.

If you want to get some insight on vendors or have some to leave, you can also use Local Bounty as well. It's a website that offers "users the chance to find local sources for goods of all kinds — from apples to art, pets to pumpkins. Users can enter information about local producers, write reviews, and rate their experiences."

Eat fresh. Eat local.

Moving on

A few months ago, we hosted Katherine Watt of the local Transition Towns initiative on the show. We talked about energy decline and climate change as opportunities for local, regional, and cultural transformation.

As a follow up, you can check out her recent piece in the Centre Daily Times, "Transition planning moves on":

What ideas are lying around for us? There are two dominant competing visions of the Centre County future. One is thousands of drill towers, concrete pads and pipelines ripping down the woods; thousands of semis rumbling along formerly quiet country roads; potential widespread water contamination and depletion; carbon flying skyward; and a steady flow of gas and profit heading east to investors in New York, London and other world financial capitals.

The other vision is food, farms and forests, and no matter how many times the drilling proponents repeat their reassuring lies, once the water’s a mile underground or contaminated, it’s unusable. Once the trees and roots are gone, so are the living ecosystems they support.

My friends working in the local sustainability movement say people “get it.” They’re sick of the talk and want to see more action. Transition planning, as pioneered in England by Rob Hopkins, has a dozen or so interwoven components for building resilient communities for the post-carbon age.

Read more here.

Two things come to mind: First, what are you doing to work toward this transition? Second, do you know how to get involved? If you don't, you can start by connecting with Transition Centre!

Sustainable Politics

Given the recent state and national election results, today's show was timely. Perhaps not timely enough given the highly charged atmosphere and the anti-climate change mood in much of the country, but timely in talking about what sustainable politics could be.

It was our good fortune to host three pretty engaged women. For the first few minutes talked with Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor (Assoc. Professor of Women's Studies) who has arranged the TEDxNorthPacificGarbagePatch event being aired at the Berg Auditorium in the Life Sciences Building at Penn State's University Park campus. You can get a sense of the problem by watching the following TED Talk and checking out the plasticpollutioncoalition.org.

Then we talked about sustainable politics with Rosa Eberly, a self-described free-range rhetorician who teachers Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State and deals with civic engagement each and every day. We also were joined by State College mayor Elizabeth Goreham. What is a sustainable politics? Well, it involves engagement, good information, alertness, and staying engaged.

Listen to the show HERE.