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When Daily Bread grew vegetables at the University of California, Oxford Garden Tract, right in the center of town, student volunteers joined Daily Bread as gardeners.
Using an unsolicited yearly grant from 'Share Our Strength' (SOS), we have helped the Malcolm X School integrate a schoolyard garden into its curriculum.
Links: www.edibleschoolyard.org
With the SOS grant, we supported the Food For Thought AIDS Food Bank Garden in Sonoma County. This horticultural therapy garden is sponsored by the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center and provides produce to the clients as well as welcoming clients to help maintain the garden, harvest its produce, or use the space for quiet meditation.
Links: www.oaec.org
The parking lot behind UA Homes, a residence for formerly homeless people, was oil-soaked and strewn with debris. Along with residents and community volunteers, we tore up the pavement and created a backyard garden.
Links: Back To Top
For the seven years the Shenoa Retreat Center was in operation, Daily Bread helped design and sponsored a one-acre mandala garden that grew produce and flowers for the hungry as well as for the Shenoa community. As a demonstration garden, it included: a teaching program for garden interns; public tours; seed-saving; heirloom varieties; and a space for rituals.
Back To Top 3. Labyrinth (Soil Restoration) In the winter of 1964, severe flooding in Northern California left some valley land scoured down to bedrock. On one such property, the pit was used for ten years as a dumping ground for Mendocino County landslide debris – rock, rubble, clay and the occasional old tire. In the year 2000, we were given permission to try and restore one acre of a friend's land to fertility.
Links: www.oaec.org Back To Top
Rice farmers in California have traditionally burned their straw, but air pollution laws have changed that in the last decade. Since rice straw decomposes very slowly, the farmers were left with acres of waste straw - until alternative builders began to design houses made of bales of straw. With our hearts in our mouth, we decided to build one at the Shenoa Retreat Center property. My family offered to fund it. Our goal was to build a gorgeous prototype of a small, load-bearing rice-straw house, see it through the permit process and successfully change the county building code. Yes, that first prototype cost twice what we thought it would and yes, it was a long and difficult process but in the end it was built - and more beautiful than we could have imagined. It was also one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever been part of. Now, less than 15 years later, strawbale building is commonplace almost everywhere. Links:
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