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We started spending less time outdoors and our exposure to nature started to diminish more than a hundred years ago, as the number of people required to produce our food fell off sharply. Somewhere along the way, the notion of kids exploring the woods or the creek near their homes gave way to the idea that it’s dangerous out there without close parental supervision. And then the trend toward indoor lives really accelerated in the last generation or so, with the explosion of hand-held digital entertainment, to the point that few kids today will ever build a fort in the vacant lot or a tree house out back.

A definitive straight-line cause-and-effect relationship between all of this and soaring incidence of childhood obesity, diabetes, asthma, depression and attention challenges may be tough to nail down. But research that just about shouts out, “Hey, you 21^st century Americans enjoying the greatest material wealth the world has ever known, you’re putting yourself at risk with all that Continue reading →

With snowdrops pushing up through the white stuff around Albany, spring must be getting near. So it is time for many of us, and we hope for you, to start planning to produce spring-fresh tastes in your yard and to add color around Continue reading →

We started digging in the dirt at Myers Middle School in the fall of 2009. We have introduced hundreds and hundreds of kids to the tastes of fresh picked vegetables since then. We have created countless opportunities for hands-on teaching and learning in our afterschool Garden Club, in classrooms, with high school students working at summer jobs and more. We have gotten some of our produce out into the community, on the shelves of the Honest Weight Food Co-op and Cardona’s Market.

Still, we would love for so many more of our friends – those we know and those we have not yet met – to see what we have been up to lately. Won’t you please join us for an Evening in an EnchantedGarden on Wednesday Sept. 21, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. We will be offering garden tours and tastes and demonstrations. We’ll have music and a bit too eat!

We would love it as well if you would help us spread the word by sending the attached flier to your e-mail friends and a link to our Facebook event to your Facebook friends. https://www.facebook.com/events/1684769585179863/We are behind the school building, at 100 Elbel Court. With just a bit of luck, we’ll still have tomatoes on the vine. Hope to see you there.

— Bill Stoneman

A flashpoint of sorts in Michelle Obama’s push for healthy school lunches is a requirement since 2012 that schools make daily offerings of fruits and vegetables. The fine print plays out differently from one circumstance to another, but it mostly requires students to take fruits and vegetables on their trays. But then, as you might guess, huge portions of that healthy food go straight into the trash.

So one indignant camp scoffs at the requirements, formally issued by the U.S. Continue reading →

What exactly drives us to build gardens at Albany schools and then lead kids out to them? Why would we bother with those time-consuming fundraising initiatives, like Boxtops for Education, and those time-consuming chores in the garden, like weeding and watering? What is the big deal about growing some of our own lettuce and tomatoes, when it’s so cheap in the supermarket?

For one thing, people who know something about where their food comes from are likely to make healthier choices about what they eat. And kids who help grow lettuce and tomatoes are so much more likely to taste them. We regularly see kids try greens right after proclaiming that they “never eat anything that grows in dirt.”

These explanations, however, just begin to get at the good that can come from Continue reading →