San Francisco Beekeeper’s Association - http://www.sfbee.org/

Backyard Hive - http://www.backyardhive.com/Articles_on_Beekeeping/Features/San_Francisco_Urban_Beekeepers/

As a friend of mine recently put into words, we have taken yet another intrepid trip around the sun, all the while, producing more CO2 then we ever have before, consuming more fossil fuels then we ever have before, seen more Arctic ice disappear than we ever have before, along with continuing to salt our once fertile fields, contaminate our rivers, aquifers, and oceans, and destroy habitats and species in every bioregion around the world. On the other hand, one could say we have done more to build awareness about climate change, fossil fuel depletion (and dependence), air, water, and soil pollution, habitat destruction and species extinction then we ever have before. We can certainly say the message is clear - we are heading in a direction few of us would like to go. While there is debate about the possible extinction of our own species, we can look to the building of our awareness, education, and action to empower us to become resilient stewards rather than helpless victims. We can choose to look at the trees and branches taken down by recent storms with despair or we can see those trees and branches (logs) as mediums for mushroom spawn inoculation, and excess organic matter as mulch and abundant soil nutrients. In a way, storms that surge through an ecosystem, much like fires, can be purging, cleansing, purifying, and regenerating, making for a more cohesive, productive, and biodiverse environment afterwards. January is a perfect month for us to follow suit, taking in our surroundings; our place, in our homes, occupations, communities, and cultures and purging out that which is not sustaining, cooperative, and equitable. It could take the form of a internal body cleanse like the Lemonade Fast, which as an astringent, squeezes out toxins from deep tissues and vital organs, while purifying the blood and providing mental clarity. It may take the form of clearing out our physical enclosures of unused household items to donate or giveaway, or bring our hazardous chemicals to Sunset Scavenger Household Hazardous Waste drop off, relying on natural cleansers like baking soda, vinegar, and borax. It could take the form of expanding our awareness through recent films such as What A Way To Go, The 11th Hour, or the online flash film, The Story of Stuff. It could take the form of a commitment to use less energy, less water, less “convenience,” and less luxuries. The important thing is to do something different this year. Do something new, courageous, thoughtful, radical. Collectively commit with friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances to stand for something, volunteer, take charge, vision, plan, and see it through, make it happen, make a paradigm shift and become the stewards we are intended to be. Many of you are already doing this. Can you tweak it? Can you do more? Can you cooperate with others that you haven’t interacted with yet? These are the thoughts we are reflecting on as we embark on another year of commitment to San Francisco’s inhabitants (flagellated microscopic organisms to many-legged, and all in between), land-base, infrastructure, and social fabric. This year, with your help, we want to weave the frayed ends of our City’s tapestry into a regenerative and nourishing ecosystem that supports and invigorates all who inhabit it.

NATURE AWARENESS

There is much to do and see this time of year if you can brave the chill and rain. Our landscape is alive with the swelling of flower buds from fruit trees that have been dormant, and flowers that have begun to open, like the deciduous, Magnolia cambellii, which is flowering right now in our SF Botanical Gardens along with 300 other species including M. dawsoniana, Ribes speciosum and R. sanquinium, and the beautiful South African Erica’s.This is the time of year the Snowy Plover, Spotted Sandpiper, Grebes, Teels, and countless other birds begin to breed or begin their spring migration. Roosevelt, and Tule Elk and Black-tailed Deer begin to lose their antlers, while Coyote, and Gray Fox begin breeding as well. While the California Sea Lion feeds on spawning Pacific Herring (that which survived the Cosco-Busan oil spill), the Pacific Gray Whale’s southern migration peaks, while the Northern Elephant Seal’s birthing period peaks with 75lb. pups along the shores of Point Reyes, Ano Nuevo, and the Farallones. The male Western Spadefoot Frog calls from vernal pools around the Bay Area, while California and Rough-skinned Newts migrate to water replenished by our recent rains, and Coho, Chinook & Chum Salmon spawn in our streams, while Steelhead migrate. All this and more, buzzing around you. Have you heard what the GGNRA has cooked up? The 2008 Golden Gate National Recreation Area Endangered Species Big Year is a race against time to observe each of the 33 endangered and threatened species found within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, while taking 33 discrete conservation recovery actions that will prevent these species from going extinct. It is a competitive event: the person who sees and helps the most species between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2008, will win the Big Year. We don’t think it should be about winning, and if anything, the prize should be we all get a more biodiverse and healthy ecosystem to share with others. That being said, it’s a great opportunity to learn, act, and take part in something that could have a tipping point for some endangered species in our area. To learn more, check out their website.

WHAT WE’VE BEEN UP TO

It has been a fruitful year for us and the work we have been doing in San Francisco. We have transformed many backyards into edible and native landscapes, created educational, organic gardens in three elementary schools, assisted with the planting of edible and medicinal native species from several bioregions of California to replace our concrete sidewalks, created community building opportunities in a supportive housing facility, developed educational tools for schools and residents, and promoted the imperative vitality of a localized economy that focuses on the needs of the people, and not corporate interests. Some projects have been more fruitful than others, but after taking the time to meditate and evaluate each one individually, we have come away with a plan to sink our roots deeper, absorb the nutrients around us, and flourish even more this year, improving what we are already doing through more cooperation and planning. We recently took a trip to Big Sur for our 2007 Annual Meeting and to improve on our vision and action plan for 2008. Check out our story with details and photos about the Monarch butterflies we saw, and much more here. Our renewed and revised vision for the Ecology Center of San Francisco will be available in February for your viewing. Check out the following pages to see photos and descriptions of some of the work we’ve been up to: School Gardens, Lending Library, Workshops, as well as some of our recent postings to various categories on our homepage.

UPCOMING AND ONGOING

Jan. 26th, Saturday - 12pm-4pm : Backyard Bounty Brigade - Carmen Aguilar’s backyard rejuvenation project : 4731 Irving St. (btwn. 48th and LaPlaya)
Come learn about sheet mulching, native plants for wildlife and medicine, and planting a winter/spring vegetable bed. We will be setting up a new irrigation system, sheet mulching most of the backyard space to prevent invasive plants from taking over, and creating a native wildlife garden specifically with shrubs, herbs, and other elements to attract birds, bees, butterflies, and more. We’ll also be putting in a winter vegetable bed complete with our favorite brassicas (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Kale, and Cabbage), as well as some garlic and other medicinal herbs. Lend a hand, learn a skill, or bring some wisdom and expertise of your own for this community building Garden Party! We will provide all necessary tools as well as some organic and local snacks and refreshments. Call/Email for more details.
Jan. 28th, Monday - 1pm-3pm : Cob Bench Building with 4th & 5th graders from Jefferson Elementary School : 1725 Irving St (btwn. 19th and 18th avenues)
We’ll be continuing our cob bench project we started a month ago at Jefferson Elementary School in an effort to bring ecological awareness, education, and action to the students of Jefferson. They learned about why we are building a bench out of earth as opposed to wood, concrete, or plastic, and they’re helping to build it as a legacy to the kindergarteners who will be using it. Come lend a hand, and a foot as we mix batches of clay, aggregate, and straw to a sublime stickiness to apply to our existing foundation. Share experiences or wisdom with some of the students, or just observe and learn about natural building and its potential in San Francisco. You may get dirty, so plan ahead if you would like to stomp the cob with your bare feet. Ideally, the sun will be warming the air around us and the rain will pause for a day, if not, this event will most likely be canceled. Please call ahead for details or confirmation (415) 846-8164. This event is on-going, so if you can’t make it this Monday, check back for future days (typically Monday or Wednesday).

BOOK OF THE MONTH

This month’s selection from our Lending Library is Joseph Jenkin’s The Humanure Handbook, an informative and amusing discussion on how composting our “undigested leftovers,:” could save the world, or at least recycle currently wasted soil nutrients while improving soil fertility and reducing soil and water pollution;, while saving millions of gallons of clean water daily, something that is currently done around the world, but little understood or accepted in the United States. Jenkins, who has been feeding his family from crops grown with the family’s “humanure” for 26 years, explains the history, science, and practicality of composting all organic matter generated by humans in a clean, safe, and productive way. One caveat is many of the statistics of sources referenced are from the 80’s and so may not apply today though they still reflect the reality experienced by many people around the world today. Though “humanure” composting is currently not allowed in San Francisco, the proper composting of pet manures is unregulated and a simple means of replicating a basic principle of ecosystems which is to recycle nutrients through the food web. Doing so will divert a great deal of soil nutrients out of our landfills and back to the soil, allowing them to be broken down by beneficial microorganisms that convert the manures into fertile, pathogen free compost for our plants - edible and ornamental - to benefit from.

The Humanure Handbook, 3rd Edition: a guide to composting human manure by Joseph Jenkins - Chelsea Green Publishing

An edited excerpt taken from chapter two, Waste Not, Want Not…

“WASTE: …Spoil or destruction, done or permitted, to lands, houses, gardens, trees, or other corporeal hereditaments, by the tenant thereof…Any unlawful act or omission of duty on the part of the tenant which results in permanent injury to the inheritance…” Black’s Law Dictionary

America is not only a land of industry and commerce, it’s also a land of consumption and waste, producing between 12 and 14 billion tons of waste annually. Much of our waste consists of organic material including food residues, municipal leaves, yard materials, agricultural residues, and human and livestock manures, all of which should be returned to the soil from which they originated. These organic materials are very valuable agriculturally, a fact well known among organic gardeners and farmers. Feces and urine are examples of natural, beneficial, organic materials excreted by the bodies of animals after completing their digestive processes. They are only “waste” when we discard them. When recycled, they are resources, and are often referred to as manures, but never as waste, by the people who do the recycling. We do not recycle waste. It’s a common semantic error to say that waste is, can be, or should be recycled. Resource materials are recycled, but waste is never recycled. That’s why it’s called “waste.” Waste is any material that is discarded and has no further use. We humans have been so wasteful for so long that the concept of waste elimination is foreign to us. Yet, it is an important concept.
The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in their drinking water supplies and those who don’t. We in the western world are in the former class. We defecate into water, usually purified drinking water. After polluting the water with our excrements, we flush the polluted water “away,” meaning we probably don’t know where it goes, nor do we care. Every time we flush a toilet, we launch five or six gallons of polluted water out into the world.12 That would be like defecating into a five-gallon office water jug and then dumping it out before anyone could drink any of it. Then doing the same thing when urinating. Then doing it everyday, numerous times, and then multiplying that by about 290 million people in the United States alone. To read the rest of this excerpt, click here.

BIRD OF THE MONTH

Thus far, we’ve only offered information about plants that we would like to highlight, but this month, and going forward we would like to improve upon this feature of our newsletter by adding other species that are an important part of the ecology of both San Francisco, the surrounding Bay Area, and beyond. This month’s selection is the Pelicanus occidentalis, or Brown Pelican. Brown Pelicans, are primarily fish eaters sustaining themselves on roughly 4 pounds of a variety of fishes including menhaden, herring, sheepshead, pigfish, mullet, grass minnows, top minnows, anchovies, and silversides, and sometimes crustaceans. Being a fairly large bird, up to 4 feet long with up to a 7 foot wingspan, it needs a larger amount of food then some other seabirds, and there for prefers, some would say needs, larger fish to consume. Pelicanus inhabits warmer coastlines all up and down North, Central, and South American on both the western and eastern coasts, but is limited to areas with cooler temperatures. Mating and breeding takes place in warm islands off the coasts of Southern California and Mexico, including the Anacapa and Coronado Islands. Specifically it remains in open ocean waters to intertidal zones and estuaries though it is not too uncommon to see them in freshwater marshes or larger bodies of water occasionally. They nest in a variety of areas including scraped holes on the ground, in rocky cliff outcroppings, and in bushes and tree tops.
Many species make up part of the food web for Pelicanus, including the fishes mentioned above (Striped Mullet, anchovies, menhaden, etc) but also the food sources that those fish consume including the various smaller fishes, planktons, and sea kelps such as Sugar Wrack and Sea Palms that provide up to 90% of the primary productivity for intertidal ecosystems. Pelicanus has no known predators though in areas around Tijuana, Mexico, humans are known to steal their eggs for consumption. That practice is illegal in the United States for many reasons, including its current status as Endangered or Threatened, depending on the jurisdiction and region Pelicanus inhabits around the country.
The historical range of Pelicanus in the United States includes the Pacific and southeastern coastal areas, as well as Central and South America, occasionally reaching up to Vancouver Island. They were wiped out of Louisiana in the early 1970s due to chemical pollutants including DDT and other pesticide residues that disrupted solid eggshell production. At the peak of their decline in California in 1971 only one bird hatched, but after the passage of a ban on DDT use by the EPA in 1972, breeding success improved greatly to hatched numbers reaching 6500 and more in the mid-80s. Currently, Pelicanus continues to inhabit much of its historic range and can be seen expanding this range inland here and there but not for breeding. This species is unique in that it is one of the largest seabirds and certainly the largest (and only Brown) of the 7 species of Pelicanus worldwide. It’s habitat, which is mostly ocean waters and breeding sites need to be restored to more pristine conditions free of pesticide and heavy metal residues coming from inland runoff and sewage outlets as well as development along estuaries and coastlines, to ensure long term success of the species.
Pelicanus is a migratory seabird, so it moves around to many different regions that have both easily maintained habitats and delicate habitats. In some regions, it feeds on certain organisms that are sensitive to warming water temperatures and a important source of food could be lost if climate change dramatically alters the temperatures of some of these regions. In addition, Pelicanus needs areas close to the ocean to breed and so tree tops and bushes in coastal scrub areas need to be designated wild and scenic or wildlife preserve lands so they can safely mate and fledge their offspring in these regions. Pelicanus is a colonizing bird that often nests within a wings distance of each other and there for to support a population of 4,000 or more breeding pairs would require large tracts of undeveloped or seldom used space at least during their breeding season of late summer.
The most important aspect of habitat restoration for Pelicanus occidentalis is the necessity to reduce our toxic chemical and heavy metal use in industry manufacturing, processing, agriculture, and sewage treatment as these elements are the most destructive to their environment and their effluent and pollutants are systemic throughout the food chain. While some measures have been proposed such as the banning of various chemicals like DDT, and moving sewage outlets farther out to sea, problems still arise with the use of other chemicals not yet banned, the use of chemicals that contain trace amounts of DDT which are still used, legal use of DDT and similar chemicals in Mexico, and illegal use here in the US. Concentrations are found in many species still today that are above the National Academy of Sciences safe limits, and while moving sewage outlets farther away from intertidal communities and areas of high biodiversity, the problem is not solved or mitigated just moved to another region that is now in danger of further human disruption and continued exploitation without regards to ecological needs and balance. Did I mention humanure composting as opposed to central sewage systems? If you didn’t know already, the effluent from San Francisco’s sewage system goes right into the ocean and the Bay. The term effluent is used because the liquid, while being as clear as water, contains enough harmful materials that it is unsafe for human consumption. If it is unsafe for human consumption, why are we dumping it in the ocean and the bay? Stay tuned for more on this to come.

RECIPE OF THE MONTH

Well besides all of the lovely winter vegetables you could be enjoying this month, and savory ways to prepare them, we though we’d offer the recipe for a simple liver flush, and a recipe for the “Lemonade Fast,” based on the small book by Stanley Burroughs’s The Master Cleanser Book. If you are intersted in a cleansing or purging fast, it can be a wonderful, educational experience, but you have to be prepared, mentally and “logistically.” The ideal lemonade diet would last for 10 days, or at least 5-7, because after three days, your body has eliminated everything in your digestive system and can work on cleaning out anything that might have been left behind or built up over the years. In addition, it gives your digestive organs a time to rest, since most of the time they’re working nearly round the clock. You’ll want to ease into and out of the diet with only whole foods, especially raw fruits and vegetables. That being said, you will have very little energy compared to what you’re used to and it is advisable to not do any major activities during the fast. It is also important to note that the special blend is actually everything the body needs to survive. For more details on this, please check out www.thelemonadediet.com. While the lemonade fast is something you could or should do up to four times per year, the liver flush is something you can do anytime and will always be healthy as a routine maintenance for your liver’s health. It is actually part of a most complex diet based on Dr. Randolph Stone’s Polarity System and it’s purifying diet. This recipe has been taken from The Holistic Health Handbook, which is also in our Lending Library.

Liver Flush:
2 tablespoons cold-pressed oil (preferrably olive or almond)
Juice of 1 large or 2 small lemons
Juice of 1 or 2 oranges (or 1 grapefruit)
1 to 4 cloves of garlic (if this is too strong, garlic can be eaten in a luncheon salad)
Dash of cayenne pepperBlend the garlic and oil in a blender (or mince the garlic thoroughly and mix with oil), then add the other ingredients and briefly blend or mix well. After drinking this mixture down, follow immediately with two cups of herbal (not black) tea, or hot water if tea is not available.Suggested Herbal Tea Blend: Boil about half a finger of fresh ginger root, sliced into six or seven pieces, with a tablespoon each of fenugreek, fennel seed, and flax seed for three minutes at a slow boil, and pour the broth into a teapot containing comfrey leaf and peppermint leaf teas (about one tablespoon of each). Makes about one pint.If you can, you should try to eat only raw or well cooked, and thoroughly masticated fruits and vegetables while excluding any dairy, grains, meat, coffee, alcohol, eggs, sugars, starches, or black tea. You can do the liver flush for a couple days or up to two weeks. Ideally a period of 3 to 5 days in between a two week period would consist of just liquids only.

Lemonade Fast:
Combine 2 tbsp. of fresh lemon or lime juice, 1 or 2 tbsp. of organic maple syrup and some cayenne pepper (as your taste allows), per 1 c. of pure water.

Drink a minimum of six cups of this mixture a day for a minimum of 10 days. Eat no solid foods. You may drink herbal teas or water as well.

Hello Friends of ECOSF,

We thank you for your patience despite our absent correspondence over the past couple months. We have had our hands and hearts full of work in gardens and projects throughout the city so much that we haven’t been able to get into the office and share the details. We’ve got highlights of recent projects and news of projects to come as well as many volunteer, educational opportunities this month! Are you welcoming winter and its thirst quenching rains as much as we are? With a little more consistency we can turn off any irrigation systems that have been keeping our fall gardens productive and let Mother Nature do what she does best. Among others you might think of doing in your garden before the end of the year include:

• Cut back evergreens for holiday decorations.
• Clean and sharpen garden tools for the New Year.
• Protect any tender plants from frosty nights and bringing indoors any heat preferring plants grown in containers.
• Plant garlic cloves either from store bought or selected varieties for their flavor. Softneck varieties are best for California. Look for “California Early,’ ‘California Late,’ or ‘Silverskin.’
• Transplant sweet peas, leafy salad greens, asian greens: mustard, tatsoi, bok choi, and any brassica family crop: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, or kale for spring harvest.
• “Chop and drop” (prune healthy limbs back to last year’s or longer growth) nitrogen fixing evergreen trees and shrubs such as acacia or Ceanothus to mulch fruit trees and other large shrubs for a nutritive winter addition.
• Plant a cover crop of Lana Vetch, Australian Winter Peas, and bell beans to add organic nitrogen to the soil. A good local mail order source for seed is John Jeavon’s Bountiful Gardens, which is a non-profit project of Ecology Action that offers heirloom, untreated, organic seeds.
• Start researching which fruit trees will do best in your space and place an order for January through May delivery of rootstock. Sandy Bar Nursery has exceptionally grown organic rootstock of many rare varieties, and Raintree Nursery has many unusual and exotic fruits from around the world.
• Spray your peach, nectarine, and almond trees for peach leaf curl with a lime sulfur (calcium polysulfide) spray. It’s considered the least toxic for organic use, but it is a skin and eye irritant so wear glasses and gloves and only mix enough to use at one time. Available at most garden supply stores.

Celestial Sightings

Have you looked up into the night sky recently? If so you might have noticed Jupiter which has been accompanying the Moon in our evenings since November 12th and will be departing December 10th. It is the largest of the planets and the brightest celestial body after the Sun, Moon, and Venus. The12th of the month will be a Full Moon with the New Moon disappearing on the 27th. On December 14th, you can witness the peaking of the Geminid meteor shower. Considered by some to be the best light show of the whole year. Just four days later, Mars is nearest the Earth and easiest to see, and on the 23rd, the Moon and Mars dance together from sunset to sunrise. But of course the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year when the Sun blazes across the Tropic of Capricorn, occurs on Monday, December 22nd. Be sure to gather with friends and have some merriment for the coming of longer days and shorter nights.

Nature Awareness

Perhaps you’re looking for an outdoor ecological adventure of exponential proportions this month? December also happens to be the peak month for Monarch Butterfly’s fall migration to roost among lupines along the California Coast from Cape Mendocino to Baja California. Amazingly, an estimated 100 million Monarch’s find their way to the same 100 winter roosts each year having never been their before, navigating the 1000’s of miles it takes each fall-winter. Some of the best places to spot them in large colonies is the Natural Bridges State Beach which is a great site for viewing lots of marine wildlife as well, and Pacific Grove’s George Washington Park. If you’re looking to spot animals with larger wings, then maybe the 108th Annual Christmas Bird Count is for you. Started on Christmas Day, 1900 when ornithologist Frank Chapman and friends decided to scatter across the Northeasts to see how many birds they could “bag” or count in contrast to the unsettling enjoyment had by hunters who had a tradition of competing for the biggest bag of dead birds on Christmas Day. 108 Years later, the scientific and educational (and enjoyable) event begins on December 14th and goes till January 5th, 2008. It is put together by the Audubon society locally although volunteers from every state and province through the US and Canada and around the world take turns watching various regions in a 15 mile circle, twenty-four hours a day to collect data on the species and number of birds seen. Accuracy is ideal as the findings are published each year in a catalog larger than a Manhattan phone book. This unique publication is often utilized by scientists to chart population changes and can often be indicators of the health of ecosystems around the world. There are over 40 volunteer viewing sites in Northern California alone with the San Francisco site being held on December 27th. (You have to register with the Audobon volunteer coordinator Dan Murphy (murphsf@comcast.net) by Friday December 8th if you’d like to participate). There are also viewings in Oakland and throughout the Bay Area.

Recent Highlights

So what HAVE we been up to these past few months? Besides keeping edible schoolyards growing at Jefferson, Monroe, and Francis Scott Key Elementary schools, we’ve also spent dozens of hours in K-5 classroom workshops in each of these schools. In doing so, we’ve provided an opportunity for the students to become more literate and in tune with their local ecology, food systems and principles to ecological gardening including planting their own vegetables, sowing cover crops, pest identification and management (hand removal), species identification, art in the garden, medicinal and culinary herb selection, harvesting crops, nutrition, and food preparation. We are also happy to have just begun an ongoing natural building project with 4th and 5th graders at Jefferson Elementary School. This past Monday was the first of a series of educational workshops on cob building at Jefferson. The students are learning about the traditional and sustainable practice of earthen construction by building a cob bench for their fellow kindergarteners to enjoy. They are learning the value of sourcing materials locally and opting for natural, renewable materials over imported and factory produced products. The clay which makes up part of the mix has been brought in from the subsoil excavated to build a foundation for the new playground on 19th and Wawona. We will be sealing the bench with a beeswax and linseed blend to weather proof it. If you would like to learn more or get experience with building a cob bench, come down to the school on Monday December 10th and 17th from 1pm till 3pm, or contact us.

Tori Jacobs had the educational and ecologically enlightening opportunity to participate in two great workshops offered by the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Occidental, CA over the past few months. First she went to the week long School Garden Teacher Training Program that has been helping teachers, gardeners, and volunteers learn how to establish and sustain school garden projects, and to integrate garden curriculum with state standards for the past 10 years. She had the opportunity to meet and connect with others in the surging school garden movement from throughout the Bay Area and California. Then she embarked on OAEC’s world renowned two week Permaculture Intensive, modeled after the 72 hour pioneering course taught by Bill Mollison over 30 years ago. For more information, click on the links to see the curriculum and details of these and many other exciting programs offered by this beacon of regenerative and restorative ecosystem design. Tori has also been collaborating with community visionaries, non-profit leaders, and organizers from all over the Bay Area as well as the folks from City Repair in Portland, OR in preparation for The Big One, a Community Transformation Convergence. For more information or to get involved go to TheBigOneIsComing.

In September, ECOSF held a workshop on Permaculture Guilds with Native Edible and Medicinal Plants at Other Avenues Worker-Owned Health Food Store. With the help of the participants we planted 4 different sidewalk plantings representing native plant communities of California including the Coastal Coniferous Forest with their Redwoods, Huckleberries, Wild Ginger, and Hazelnuts and Riparian areas that include California Wild Grape, Mugwort, and Blue Elderberry. The project is not yet completed and we would love your help wrapping it up, see our upcoming events for more details!

We also have had the pleasure of working with some of the residents of the Dudley apartments, a permanent supportive housing program of the Hamilton Family Center. Located on 6th St in the SOMA, the neighborhood isn’t exactly a green patch of pasture, so we’re working with the staff and residents to help breath some new life into the building and the neighborhood by offering exclusive workshops to the residents to provide an enjoyable community building experience around the areas of nutritional cooking, energy efficiency, non-toxic household products, and are hoping to help bring in some air purifying plants such as golden pothos (Epipremnum aureum), philodendrons (various species), and Boston ferns (Nephrolepsis exaltata) which the EPA suggests if maintained properly can completely rid the air of pollutants on a daily basis. We recently completed a Vegan-In-Season Cooking class their with Alyssa Cox, an accomplished Natural Chef and personal “cuisine curator extraordinaire” who has whipped up nutritious and delicious meals for the vegans and vegetarians on multiple Warped Tour’s, and volunteered her time for the folks at the Dudley. Check out her website EarthenFeast for catering or personal chef services.

Upcoming Events

Are you ready to fight the greedy-gravitational pull of holiday consumer consumption and volunteer with your local community-building-ecology-action organization instead? If so, join us for a variety of volunteer projects this month:

• December 10th and 17th, Mondays - 1pm-3pm at Jefferson Elementary School located at 1725 Irving St, btwn. 19th and 18th Avenues.
• Cob Bench building with 4th and 5th graders
• Learn about natural building and the artful science of making a good cob mix, starting with an urbanite foundation, and natural weather sealants and plasters.
• December 15th, Saturday - 12pm-4pm at 3930 Judah St. btwn 44th and 45th Avenues.
• Replanting the Chaparral and Coastal Scrub communities that have succumbed to human pressure on the sidewalk.
• Build a sturdy kick-walk-dog proof (or at least resistant) fence around all seven sidewalk plantings to prevent further damage and improve look and function of the urban native landscape.
• December 16th, Sunday - 12pm-5pm at Double Rock Community Garden located at the corner of Griffith @ Fitzgerald in the Bayview
• Medicinal Herb Maze completion and planting
• Come out and help us stack another layer of urbanite for the borders of the walkable herb spiral, fill in with compost and mulch, and plant dozens of native, traditional, and Chinese medicinal herbs for the Alice Griffith Community and Bayview Farmers Market.
• For more information about these events please go to our website, email us, or call (415) 846-8164

Planting A Seed

One of the primary goals of ECOSF is to connect the community to outstanding local organizations, institutions and businesses that provide vital goods and services in a sustainable way. The cohesiveness of our community grows as we become more interconnected with local efforts and support more local commerce, and in that spirit of community we will be featuring an example of excellent local players in our newsletters. The first organization we will spotlight is Garden For the Environment (GFE), our own preeminent local gardening organization.The GFE serves as a community gardening resource and outreach organization that promotes sustainable landscaping practices and wise resource use mostly through direct training of volunteers and interns that then go out and spread the knowledge throughout the community. The problems they address range from consumption of consumer goods and finite resources like water and fossil fuels to waste mis-management and unsustainable food systems. Founded in 1990 as part of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG), now fiscally sponsored by the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council and located at 7th & Lawton in San Francisco, GFE maintains a beautiful one acre demonstration garden including edible and native plants, fruit trees, resource efficient gardening techniques, and a wide array of composting systems on display. Outdoor classrooms hold weekly workshops and Gardening and Compost Educator Training (GCETP) classes which are taught by Suzi Palladino and Blair Randall who also wear every other hat for the organization.

GFE Programs include:

• Monthly compost education workshops conducted at the garden and other community gardens throughout San Francisco
• Resource Efficient Landscape Education series (RELE), covering mushroom cultivation, water wise gardening, container growing, guerilla gardening, bike tours, using recycled and reused landscape materials, and more.
• School Education program offered in partnership with San Francisco Unified School District and San Francisco’s Department of the Environment. – centered around compost education
• Three month intensive Gardening and Composting Educator Training program-or “getup”

The Garden for the Environment is a wonderful local resource for ecological gardening and resource awareness. Their work makes learning about gardening and many other ecological issues accessible and fun for everybody. They are a shining example of a vital organization that brings the community together, raises ecological consciousness and promotes awareness and action. We will be partnering with them on many projects in 2008 so stay tuned!

News and Media

We came across some interesting media we wanted to share with you. Earthbeat Radio, a groundbreaking environmental news and interview program of Washington D.C.’s WPFW and Pacifica Radio.Unfortunately it isn’t broadcast on a station local to the Bay Area, but you can download programs off their website and they podcast as well. Some recent interviews were with presenters at the recent International Forum on Globalization Teach-In: Confronting the Global “Triple Crisis.” Climate change, peak oil, and global resource depletion and extinction were on the agenda for discussion by great thinkers, scientists, educators, researchers, and activists from around the world, including: Vandana Shiva, Richard Heinberg, David Korten, Michael T. Klare, Bill McKibben, among others. IFG, a San Francisco based non-profit says the audio and video from the Teach-In will be posted on their website by December 14th. Be sure to check out the November 20th recording of Earth Beat radio for to hear a recorded speech by David Korten, publisher of YES! magazine and author of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. If you’d like to read a story we did about the recent oil spill in the Bay and some information and ideas you may not have read in your newspaper go to Cosco-Busan Spill.

Until Next Year

It has been a truly inspiring year of opportunities and events and we hope to bring you more ecological education and community building opportunities that make a direct impact on you and other residents of San Francisco. We will be working on goals, objectives, and programs for 2008 in the coming weeks and we value your input as citizens, stakeholders, teachers, students, and community members. We wouldn’t be able to do what we do without your support and appreciation for the commitment we bring to San Francisco. We want to make sure our programs are focused around community needs and respond to requests from people of all demographics and interests. Please take some time to send us a note saying what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see, and how you’d be able to help us achieve those goals be it volunteering your expertise, ideas, or muscle, donations, or by becoming a member.

We look forward to serving you and yours for years to come! Happy Solstice!

-Davin, Sam, and Tori

Hello Friends of the Earth,

Hopefully you are all enjoying the fruits (and veggies) of this wonderful summer harvest. We have heard from many farmers that it has been a great year for crops despite real drought concerns. Our backyards are blooming and ripening and the farmer’s markets are exploding with peaches, nectarines, plums, pluots, and blueberries. Even though we’re at the peak of our typical harvest time, San Francisco’s climate graces us with a long growing season, and if you get your seeds sown and transplants planted now you can reap a winter harvest of broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Romanesco, lettuce, sugar snap peas, carrots, radishes and if you planted some winter squash about a month ago, you’d be ready to harvest around October. If you’re not planning on growing a winter crop, maybe you’d like to grow a cover crop that can overwinter and then be mulched into the soil to add fertility and organic matter for some new veggie beds for spring. A good “green manure” mix of 50% Bell beans, 30% ‘Magnus’ peas, and 20% Common Vetch can compete against the weeds that come with our winter rains and add lots of organic matter and nitrogen for your spring crop. Harmony Farm Supply just outside of Santa Rosa offers this winter mix for $0.79/lb and 2-3 lb. is good for 1000 sq. ft.

August is also an exciting month for the Cosmos, which Rudolph Steiner and his biodynamic teachings suggest are integral to a healthy, ecologically balanced garden or agricultural system. If it weren’t so fogged in the evenings of August 6th and 7th you could have seen Mars and the Moon appearing together in the night sky. But don’t fret, if you can find yourself on a cloudless (or fog-less) spot the night of Sunday, August 12th you’ll catch the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, which happens to coincide with the New Moon so it should be a dark sky. Towards the end of the month, on the early morning of Tuesday, August 28th there will be a total lunar eclipse that you won’t want to miss. During this eclipse the moon’s appearance can go from bright orange to blood red to dark brown.

Plant of the Month - Quarcus agrifolia (Coast Live Oak)

Summer time in our Mediterranean climate of California means dry weather and rolling hills of golden grasses dotted with the occasional forest green canopy of a mighty oak tree. Much of the state’s land below 3,000 feet used to be covered with oak woodlands and today even after extensive agricultural and urban development Oak trees still play an important role in California’s ecology. We find many species of Oak here including Valley Oak, Blue Oak, Tanbark Oak, Black Oak, and our local native the Coast live oak.

Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) is in the Fagaceae family along with 900 other species of Oak around the world and can be found along the coast from Baja to the Northern Coast Ranges. The name live refers to the evergreen nature of the leaves and sets this tree apart from most other Oak species (there is also a Canyon Live Oak that grows more inland). These trees can grow more than 40 feet tall and can cover a horizontal area at least that wide with a curly weeping branch pattern that represents the dendritic form that can be found throughout nature. The Ohlone, an indigenous people native to the Bay Area harvested ripe acorns from the Live Oak in the fall with gratitude and celebration for their usefulness and abundance. The flour derived from mashing fresh acorns and then leeching out the tannins can be turned into a hearty mush or even baked into a tasty bread. Although Live Oak acorns have more tannins and thus require more leeching than the valley oak they supposedly produce a more filling meal. Live Oak can be a powerful addition to your ecological garden of native shrubs like Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) and Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum), or planted as a street tree provided that you have an area with full sun exposure, and its drought tolerance makes watering unnecessary after a few years. Refer to our excerpt from Toby Hemmingway’s “Gaias’s Garden” to learn more about the ecological functions of oak in the landscape.

The Coast Live Oak can be found growing in the the mixed conifer forest with Douglass fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), California Bay Laurel (Umbellularia californica), Pacific Madrone (Arbutus menziesii) and other Oak species. In San Francisco we are lucky enough to have some old Oak groves surviving right under our noses. The northeast section of Golden Gate Park behind McLaren Lodge on Stanyan is home to some of the oldest Coast Live Oaks in the City. In fact these are the only trees native to the shifting sand dune habitat of coastal San Francisco. Another large and probably older stand of trees carpets the hillside of Buena Vista Park on Haight and Baker. You can also see them in Glen Canyon, the Presidio, dotting the Brotherhood Way corridor and in McLaren park in the southern part of the city (you can usually tell the Coast Live Oak by the fuzz on the underside of the small, rounded ,light green leaf). Unfortunately the Coast Live Oak is one of the species that the epidemic Sudden Oak Death is decimating across the state. It is believed that up to 90% of the California’s Coast Live Oaks and Tan Oaks are affected and dying. For more information on Sudden Oak Death see click here.

One way you can learn more about our native species is to become familiar with what the San Francisco Park and Recreation Dept. calls our Significant Natural Resource Areas. These are fragments of original natural communities that still survive in San Francisco. As Rec and Park puts it “they are essentially “islands” in a “sea” of human-built environment. This fragmentation has many effects which threaten their continued existence. In order to counteract these threats, people need to help care for them. They are the last vestiges of the beautiful and unique ecosystems that are our natural heritage in San Francisco. Our actions can help to guarantee their survival. To get more involved contact a land-steward or community group for your neighborhood park or SNRA.

Volunteer Opportunities with ECOSF this Month

This month ECOSF will be helping to revitalize and regenerate a 2800 sq ft school garden for Monroe Elementary School in the Excelsior District. The school is located at 260 Madrid St. (btwn. Excelsior Ave. and Avalon Ave.) and there is usually ample street parking available. We’ll be out there 3 days this month so you have plenty of opportunities to get involved:

Tuesday August 14th - We’ll be doing some initial site work in preparation for planting a fall/winter salad bar garden for the students the following week. We will remove some of the existing vegetation and clearing overgrown pathways to make room for edible and medicinal native shrubs and the young aspiring naturalists who will be exploring the garden this fall. Some of the work will include pruning, and removing trees and shrubs, fixing the irrigation system, weeding some areas and applying sheet mulch methods to prepare some veggie beds. We will be out there from 12pm till 4pm and will provide all necessary tools and some organic juices and snacks.

Saturday August 18th - We’ll be planting the winter salad bar garden of lettuce, sugar snap peas, broccoli, cauliflower and kale. We’ll also be planting some edible and medicinal native shrubs such as Pink-Flowering Currants, Elderberries, Huckleberries, Serviceberies, Salmonberries, Osoberries, and Salal. (That’s a lot of berries!) We’ll also be adding some support species because how can we emulate a balanced ecosystem with only food for humans? Certainly the children will have to compete with some crafty birds for some of these Berrrrrific shrubs, but we’ll also include some nitrogen fixing, and beneficial insect and wildlife habitat plants like Ceanothus, Lupine, Yarrow, Coffeeberry, Toyon, Buckwheat, Goldenrod and Coyote Brush and more. We’ll be on the site talking about the benefits and use of these species and planting them from 12pm till 5pm with tools, plants, and organic refreshments.

Monday August 20th - Cob-Mortar Rock Wall Completion at Sally and Roger Bland’s Home. We’ll be back at the Bland residence to finish the cob-mortared rock wall we started for their veggie bed. If you’re unfamiliar with cob (a mixture of sand, clay, and straw) come on down for a stomping good time as we make up a fresh mix of natural mortar and slap it between some rocks to make an attractive rock wall for a raised bed. We’ll be talking about using cob for lots of other projects for the backyard enthusiast like building a cob oven or a cob bench. We may also do a little tending in the garden and plant a few winter veggies for the family. Their home is located at 1370 12th Avenue (btwn. Irving and Judah St) in the Sunset. We’ll be there from 12pm till 5pm with refreshments and dirty fun!

Saturday August 25th - We’ll be back at Monroe Elementary school for a school picnic for incoming kindergartners and 1st graders so we’ll finish planting some of the native shrubs with them and to sow some carrots, radishes, and beets with them as well. That will be from 11am till 2pm.

Some of the work we do wouldn’t be possible without the help of volunteers like you. We hope to see you out at one of our events this month and if you have any questions please email us at info@eco-sf.org

Other Events and Happenings this Month and Beyond

The SF Botanical Garden will be having their Shade Plant Sale this Saturday, August 11th. For more information click here to refer to their website. The Urban Farmer Store, San Francisco’s premier irrigation specialists, will be offering a free Landscape Watering workshop Saturday August 25th at 10am to introduce you to innovative sprinkler and drip irrigation solutions. You can learn about system automation with valves, timers, and rain sensors. This class will teach you how to plan your own efficient irrigation system. The class is free but space is limited so reserve your seat by calling the store at (415) 661- 2204 or by email. If you don’t mind a beautiful drive past Sebastopol to Occidental we encourage you to check out the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Fall Plant Sale and Open House. Choose from hundreds of varieties of California Certified Organic heirloom brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, etc), lettuces, salad greens, chards, leeks, herbs, as well as old-fashioned annual flowers. Select from an array of ornamental and edible perennials propagated from their own collections. OAEC is located on 15290 Coleman Valley Road in Occidental which is about a 1.5 hour drive from San Francisco, but well worth it. The plant sale will go from 9am till 5pm on August 25th and 26th and they will offer garden tours at 10am and 11am each day. If you haven’t been up to OAEC yet, you won’t want to miss out on this incredible sale and ecological paradise.

Other Avenues, a worker-owned cooperative health food store located at 3930 Judah St. (btwn 44th and 45th Avenues) has been provided organic produce, bulk bins, and more in the Sunset district for over 25 years. In September they will be hosting ECOSF for a workshop on Creating and Planting Native Guilds. This workshop will go introduce the concept of planting species that can harmonize with one another and create a cooperative community of plants that can produce food and medicine, fix nitrogen, attract beneficial insects, provide habitat for birds and other wildlife, make its own mulch, and thrive with little maintenance. We will spend some time talking about the roles each plant plays in a guild and which native species can fill those roles as well as taking it to the streets to plant a variety of these guilds out in front of Other Avenues in some recently removed sidewalk space. If you would like to attend this free workshop going on Saturday September 8th from 2pm till 4pm, stop by Other Avenues in the last two weeks of August to sign up. The workshop is free but space is limited and you have to sign up in person. While you’re there, check out their local organic produce and other earth-friendly products.

Sizzling Succulent Recipe for your Summer Harvest

For delicious, seasonal, vegetarian meals in under an hour, Peter Berley’s cookbook Fresh Food Fast may be just what you’re looking for. We have it available to check out in our Lending Library so we wanted to offer you a tasty side dish to any summer harvest meal:

Pan-Seared Summer Squash with Garlic and Mint

- Pan searing the squash caramelizes it and produces a nice crust. The sugars become concentrated and the juices are locked in. You can use the same technique with eggplant slices and onion rings. Yield: 4 servings. (You may want to double the recipe its so good)

2 pounds summer squash, sliced 1/2-inch thick
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons fresh mint, torn into pieces
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt or kosher salt, plus additional to taste
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly milled black pepper

1. Warm a large heavy skillet, griddle, or grill pan over medium heat. Arrange the squash in a single layer and sear until speckled with brown and beginning to blacken, about 5 minutes. Flip the squash and cook for 4 to 5 minutes more. Repeat with remaining squash.

2. In a serving bowl, combine the lemon juice, mint, garlic, sea salt, and red pepper flakes and let marinate for 5 minutes. Whisk in the oil.

3. Transfer the seared squash to the bowl, toss to coat with the dressing, and let rest for about 5 minutes. Season with additional salt and pepper and serve.

As always, ECOSF is dedicated to provided information, education, and services of an ecological nature to San Francisco. If you haven’t become a member, please consider making a contribution to these efforts and help create a cooperative community. If you have any projects, ideas, or suggestions, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you! Remember, blueberries are only in season for a couple more weeks so you might want to stock up while you can.

To a delicious August filled with fun, frolicking, and festivities,

Davin, Sam, and Tori
Ecology Center of San Francisco

Hello Friends,

Summer is here, or at least right around the corner. Traditionally the first day of summer falls on The Solstice, which is also known as the Feast of St. John the Baptist, Gathering Day, Litha, Midsummer, Sonnwend, Alben Heruin, Alban Heflin, Thing-Tide, Feast of Epona, Feill-Sheathain, Johannistag, Vestalia, and All-Couples Day. “Solstice” is derived from two Latin words: “sol” meaning sun, and “sistere,” to cause to stand still. This is because, as the summer solstice approaches, the noonday sun rises higher and higher in the sky on each successive day. On the day of the solstice, it rises an imperceptible amount, compared to the day before. In this sense, it “stands still.”

The Solstice was referred by some as Midsummer because it is roughly the middle of the growing season throughout much of Europe. But it’s not to late to sow seeds for summer crops in San Francisco. The renowned biointensive farmer and educator, Alan Chadwick, believed that the best time to sow your seeds was during the New Moon, which is when the Moon is directly between the Sun and the Earth and it appears dark without the indirect light of the Sun. It is believed that at this time, the greatest forces of nature - gravity, light, and magnetism - are at their greatest intensity as noted by the high tides of the ocean, and the high tides of water in soil, which help seeds germinate faster. The New Moon occurs on June 15th this month, and the Full Moon, which is the best time to transplant your new seedlings, occurs on June 30th. Some crops you might like to consider planting for June are corn, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squashes, and beans.

You may even like to consider the indigenous Three Sisters Garden of corn, beans, and squash. The benefit of growing these three “sisters” together is the harmony created by allowing the beans to grow up and be supported by the corn stalks while fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere into a soluble form which can be taken up by the corn and squash, while the large leaves of the squash, which is also grown at the base of the corn provides shade over the soil, creating a micro-climate that improves water retention in the soil, and decreases the likelihood of competition from “unwanted volunteers” (or as some would refer to as weeds).

There are lots of exciting events going on in San Francisco this month, including a pagan gathering and ritual for the Solstice at Ocean Beach near Taraval Street starting at 7pm. This event is put on by Reclaiming, and would encourage people to gather at the end of the longest day of the year to celebrate the light and honor the turning of the Wheel of the Year back toward the darkness. They ask people to please bring clean firewood (firewood is always welcome - no pallets, nails, construction material, plywood, painted or treated wood), warm clothes, food or non-alcoholic drink to share, and a towel if you want to plunge into the ocean.

Are you feeling the need for more information about the 2007 Farm Bill currently being debated by our lawmakers? Many people disregard the importance of this bill, which is revised once every 5 years, assuming it only concerns residents in farm or rural communities. Since the purpose of the the Farm Bill is to regulate farm production, prices and subsidies, and outline provisions on commodity programs, trade, conservation, credit, agricultural research, food stamps, and marketing, it is something that concerns and affects everyone, including farmers around the world. If you would like to learn more about the current debate and how you can get involved come to Alemany Farm this weekend, Saturday June 9th for a 2007 Farm Bill Teach-In. The forum will be from 2pm to 4pm and will include the following panelists: Anuradha Mittal from the Oakland Institute, Tim Frank from America Farmland Trust, Chris Cook, award-winning journalist and author of Diet for a Dead Planet (which is available in our Lending Library). For directions to the farm, check out their website at www.AlemanyFarm.org.

Some other interesting events going on in San Francisco and beyond this month include:

June 5th - World Environment Day. This year World Environment Day focuses on the effects that climate change is having on polar ecosystems and communities, on other ice- and snow-covered areas of the world, and the resulting global impacts, and will be held in the city of Tromsø, Norway. You can stay tuned to whats going on and learn more by visiting the UNEP’s website.

June 8th - World Ocean Day. Preview Ocean related films and meet several leaders in the Ocean Conservation community including filmmakers, marine biologists, and other notable guests of honor at the Gallery Lounge, a cocktail lounge and art gallery located Brannan and 4th Streets. For more information go to http://oceandaysf.org/

June 6th-8th - Bay Delta Tour. Put on by the Water Education Foundation, this 3-day, 2-night tour takes participants to the heart of California water policy – San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Stops include the Delta Cross Channel, the federal Tracy Pumping Plant, Bay-Delta model in Sausalito, Los Vaqueros Reservoir and Suisun Marsh. Issues discussed include Delta Planning initiatives, water project operations, fish passage, ecosystem restoration, levees and flood management, Delta agriculture, drinking water quality and water supply reliability. The tour begins and ends at Sacramento International Airport, and includes a ferry ride across San Francisco Bay.

June 9th - Herb Spiral design and creation. An ECOSF Garden Party follow-up, Tori will be showing you how to design and create an edible, medicinal, herb spiral which maximizes growing space by going vertical. She will be talking about selecting rocks, and ideal plants to use and placement of them, as well as how to incorporate drip irrigation into the spiral.

If you haven’t had a chance to come down to a Garden Party and would like to see what you missed, check out the photos from some of our recent Garden Parties on our website. More photos are being uploaded daily, so check back often. On May 31st, Sam and Davin hosted a group of 19 students and 3 teachers from Lick Wilmerding High School for some education and volunteering at Alemany Farm. They discussed the ecological and social impacts of our industrial agricultural system and prepared the students for thinking about sustainable alternatives. The students also enjoyed weeding the strawberry beds instead of using herbicides like most commercial fruit growers, and double-digging newly cleared plots to plant instead of fossil fueled tilling machinery. If you would like us to host a field trip like this for your group or class, please let us know.

As always, we encourage everyone to continue our collective civic engagement with community building efforts. Little movements can have big changes and we all benefit from one another’s good will. Until next month, have a happy June!

Sincerely,

Davin, Sam, Tori!
Ecology Center of San Francisco

Hello Friends!

April is here and with it dynamic weather variations and greening all about, and of course Earth Day. Hillsides are still golden with mustard flowers and the cherry blossoms are in bloom. Grapevines and apple trees are sending out some of their first leaves. There’s also lots of greening going in SF legislation, leading the nation in goals of clean energy in the City. ECOSF is growing as well with new members and new programs.

GARDEN PARTIES THIS MONTH

ECOSF will be hosing two Garden Parties in April. On Saturday April, 28^th we will be helping Francis Scott Key Elementary school in the Sunset build some 3’x8’ planter boxes so the students can start growing some lettuce before school lets out for summer. There will be other community projects going on at the school that day as well as well as some art activities for children.

The following day, Sunday April 29^th we will be building a pond in Tori’s backyard which will be the future home of some Runner ducks, as well as grow some beneficial water plants. We will be digging the pond out, laying out the pond liner, and filling it with water, plants, and a rock border.

For more details, check out our UPCOMING EVENTS page on our website.

MORE GREEN FOR THE CITY

As if the Mayor’s office and other City agencies couldn’t offer any more green initiatives (of course there’s always more they could do), here’s a run down of some of the latest proposals and projects going on in San Francisco:

- Supervisor Tom Ammiano and State Senator Carole Migden have launched an ambitious proposal to provide San Francisco with 50% clean energy by 2017. Another first-in-the-nation approach to the environment, the plan suggests using bond money already approved by voters to install solar panels on city buildings as well as looking into wind systems and possibly geothermal. While the plan has been on the table since 2005, it has recently gone through enhancements that include a 150-megawatt wind farm. While recent details have not been posted online, check back on our MEDIA page for more information.

- Another first for San Francisco, PG&E and the San Francisco Giants will be beginning the installation of the first Photovoltaic system for a Major League Baseball stadium next month. 590 panels will provide a capacity of up to 120 kilowatts. The project should be completed in time for the July 10^th All-Star game being held at AT&T Park.

- While the Mayor’s Executive Directive 06-02, also known as the Biodiesel Initiative, which was supposed to require all city vehicles that run on diesel to run on 20% biodiesel, has not met it’s goals, there have been some achievements we can be proud about. Since September of 2006, all San Francisco International Airport shuttles, 150 vehicles, are running on the 20% minimum, as are 900 central shop vehicles, including street sweepers and Recreation and Park Dept. equipment, and some Fire Department vehicles. San Francisco uses about 8 million gallons of diesel fuel each year, and while the initiative was hoping to supply 1.6 million gallons of biodiesel, currently the city is only using about 200,000 gallons. (To read more about this and other exciting green news in the city, check out the latest Guardian Green Issue for the week of April 18-24

NEW ADDITIONS TO ECOSF WEBSITE - YOU CAN HELP!

While we can be the first to say www.eco-sf.org still has a long way to go before providing the citizens of San Francisco with all the environmental, ecological, and informative information we would like, we have added some new pages. Be sure to check out our MEDIA page with links to newspaper articles and radio programs you can download all focused on San Francisco or California environmental news. We will scour the pages of local newspapers, and media outlets to provide you with accurate and up to date attention on new policies being debated and changes that can have positive or unhealthy effects on our lives here in the City. If you find something we missed, please let us know so we can include it as well.

We also added an UPCOMING EVENTS page to keep you posted about events ECOSF will be hosting as well as other notable places, spaces, and gatherings going on in the City. If you have an event you’d like us to post, please pass it along.

Lastly, we have added a LENDING LIBRARY page where we will preview an excerpt from a book from our Lending Library. We plan on having a full list of books available for members to borrow in the next couple weeks, and each month we will highlight at least one book we feel is especially important for our community to be aware of. This month’s selection is from the Sightline Institute (formerly Northwest Envrionment Watch), and is a book entitled Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things. In it you will find well researched data on how things like shoes, cars, and computers are made and the waste and environmental damage associated with it’s manufacture, shipping, and consumption. There is also sections on food items like french fries and cola. The following is a paragraph from the chapter on computers. For the full excerpt, click here.

Computer Chips:

Though the chips weigh next to nothing, making them generated more waste than making any other part of my computer. The 400-step process of making chips and covering them with millions of microscopic electrical switches began with silica mined in Washington. Silica, or silicon dioxide, the basic ingredient of sand, is the most abundant substance in the Earth’s crust. The silica was heated with carbon in an Oregon plant to form carbon monoxide and 98% pure silicon. This silicon was heated with hydrochloric acid, then with hydrogen gas, and cooled to form a “hyper pure” silicon rod eight inches across. The crystalline rod was sliced into wafers less than a millimeter thick, and these were ground and chemically polished to a mirror like shine and trucked to the chip manufacturer in California’s Silicon Valley. The chip factory, called a wafer fab, stretched longer than two football fields and housed equipment manufactured by more than 100 companies around the world. My computer’s chips – one wafer’s worth – were made in “clean rooms,” where only one to five particles were present in each cubic foot of air and workers wore gowns, booties, and gloves to avoid contaminated the wafers. In contrast, hospital operating rooms have 10,000 to 100,000 particles per cubic foot; outside air contains 500,000 to 1 million particles. Keeping these rooms particle free required pumping the inside air through special filters that removed fine particles. But the filters did not remove solvent vapors, some of which were toxic, from the air the workers breathed.

INVITATION FOR CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Do you have something you’d like to tell the community about? Would you like to write an essay or piece for ECOSF’s website, or perhaps help contribute to our newsletters. Are staff of 4 is looking to grow with the help of some dedicated volunteers to lend a few hours a month working on editorials and data gathering and entry for our website and newsletter. No experience necessary, just a desire to help ECOSF spread useful information. Let us know if you’d like to participate.

As always, we thank you for your support and appreciation for our work in the community. If you have any suggestions, comments, or concerns, please let us know. Hope to see you soon!

Davin, Sam, and Tori

Hello Friends,

Happy winter, and New Year of course. The frost has brought the coldest days of the year though the chill may entice you outside to experience our Mediterranean climate in it’s sharpest sting. It’s also a good time to warm yourselves inside with friends and family. We enjoy both, and it’s also the perfect time to plan for the year ahead. The City will blossom this year with new life from every direction. From native blue-eyed grass growing up through cracks in a sidewalk to new friendships and partnerships made through solidarity for a common cause and the sharing of wisdom, work, and the harvest. There is so much excitement (personal and market oriented) about “Going Green” and saving the environment that it’s hard not to get swept up in the media blitz or see the latest sustainable change from corporations and small businesses alike. Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said in a speech broadcast to all of Wal-Mart’s facilities last November “To me, there can’t be anything good about putting all these chemicals in the air. There can’t be anything good about the smog you see in cities. There can’t be anything good about putting chemicals in these rivers in Third World countries so that somebody can buy an item for less money in a developed country. Those things are just inherently wrong, whether you are an environmentalist or not.” Rather than just tackling one sustainable initiative, Scott is planning on executing the following: increase the efficiency of its vehicle fleet by 25% over the next three years, double fleet efficiency in ten years, eliminate 30% of the energy used in stores, reduce solid waste from U.S. stores by 25% in three years and invest $500 million in sustainability projects, such as becoming the biggest seller of organic milk, the biggest buyer of organic cotton in the world, demanding that its suppliers figure out ways to cut down on packaging and energy costs, the opening of two “green” Super Centers, and a plan to get 100% of it’s energy for US stores from renewable energy sources in the next three years. Of course Wal-Mart has a legacy of environmental damage from occupying over 75,000 acres of would be farmland, wildlife habitat, or green space across the country for it’s 3,600 U.S. stores, 100 distribution centers, and parking lots. Some would say Scott’s plan is a veritable “green-washing” but anyway we look at it, it’s going to be a good thing for the planet whatever they do. When we had breakfast at Zuzu’s, a proprietor owned eatery on Cole St, this morning, we were happy to see they had made the change to all organic milk and eggs from free range, vegetarian fed hens. This trend is happening all over the City and beyond (see California’s latest ground breaking legislation on climate change below).

New for ECOSF

ECOSF has a lot of growing and blossoming to do as well this year and we hope that you would like to grow with us. We will be launching our membership campaign soon, applying for grants to open a physical Ecology Center of San Francisco, and partnering with several other environmental and social-justice non-profits to create a space for the whole community of San Francisco to envision their future and put it into action, with or without the help of politicians, bureaucrats, and market incentives. We want more schools to have edible, teaching, school gardens and where possible get their food from local organic farms. We want more backyards and balconies to be bountiful with food, fiber, and fuel. We want more local businesses to follow the sustainable and regenerative path, reducing their energy, reusing, recycling, and composting their wastes, and more environmentally-friendly practices from “cradle to cradle”. We want sidewalks turned into GreenWalks, native wildlife attracting plants replacing cold concrete, and medians to follow suit. We want more citizens going outside, getting involved, growing, greening, volunteering, and committing to awareness, accountability and lifestyle change.

Get Inspired

In the Winter 2007 issue of YES! magazine the focus was: Go Local: Declare Independence from the Corporate Global Economy. They didn’t focus on anti-globalization, but how the community can come together in a more beneficial, more productive, and more harmonious way while still fending off globalization’s grip on our economy. Their mission is to support you and other people worldwide in building a just, sustainable, and compassionate world. I urge you to pick up a copy (or better yet, borrow it from a friend, or check them out online www.yesmagazine.org) but here are some highlights to get you going:

Independence from the Corporate Global Economy - The old story says we have to depend on big corporations. The new story tells us we can earn a livelihood, gain freedom, and build community through cooperation.

Green-Collar Jobs for Urban America - Oakland is creating jobs by going green.

Local Energy, Local Power - Renewable energy revolution is bring power back home.

Creating Real Prosperity - Does going local mean abandoning the world’s poor?

How Commerce Consumed the Commons - Where the commons went, and how to get it back.

Food to Stay - How a local food system builds health and community wealth.

The Economics of Life in Balance - Pacific Island cultures thrived for millennia on an economy that is nothing like Adam Smith’s.

10 Ways to a Human-Scale Economy

Hopefully you will find this issue as stimulating, inspiring, and a call to action as we have.

California and the Governator Take on Climate Change

Joined by national and international dignitaries who have been leaders in the fight against global climate change, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed AB 32 by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), California’s landmark bill that establishes a first-in-the-world comprehensive program of regulatory and market mechanisms to achieve real, quantifiable, cost-effective reductions of greenhouse gases. “When I campaigned for governor three years ago, I said I wanted to make California No. 1 in the fight against global warming. This is something we owe our children and our grandchildren,” said Gov. Schwarzenegger at signing ceremonies in San Francisco and Los Angeles. AB 32 requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to develop regulations and market mechanisms that will ultimately reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Mandatory caps will begin in 2012 for significant sources and ratchet down to meet the 2020 goals. In the interim, CARB will begin to measure the greenhouse gas emissions of the industries it determines as significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The bill also provides the Governor the ability to invoke a safety valve and suspend the emissions caps for up to one year in the case of an emergency or significant economic harm.

Specifically, AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, requires CARB to:

• Establish a statewide greenhouse gas emissions cap for 2020, based on 1990 emissions by January 1, 2008.
• Adopt mandatory reporting rules for significant sources of greenhouse gases by January 1, 2009.
• Adopt a plan by January 1, 2009 indicating how emission reductions will be achieved from significant greenhouse gas sources via regulations, market mechanisms and other actions.
• Adopt regulations by January 1, 2011 to achieve the maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective reductions in greenhouse gas, including provisions for using both market mechanisms and alternative compliance mechanisms.
• Convene an Environmental Justice Advisory Committee and an Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee to advise CARB.
• Ensure public notice and opportunity for comment for all CARB actions.
• Prior to imposing any mandates or authorizing market mechanisms, CARB must evaluate several factors, including but not limited to impacts on California’s economy, the environment and public health; equity between regulated entities; electricity reliability, conformance with other environmental laws and ensure that the rules do not disproportionately impact low-income communities.

Because of California’s massive and growing economy, the state is the 12th largest emitter of carbon in the world despite leading the nation in energy efficiency standards and lead role in protecting its environment. This was taken from a press release from the governor’s office. For the full transcript, go to http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/press-release/4111/

Books to Help You Plan and Grow

Here are just a few titles we feel are going to help you make a difference inside and outside of your home:

How to Grow More Vegetables*than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine by Ecology Action’s John Jeavons

Green Remodeling: Changing the World One Room at a Time by David Johnston and Kim Master, LEED AP

Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age by Michael H. Shuman (pardon the Amazon link, try to find it in your local bookstore, or ask them to order it for you)

As always we look forward to hearing your suggestions, comments, thoughts, and appreciation. Let us know how we can serve your community best! Let us know what you think, what you’d like to see added, and anything else that comes to mind. Happy New Year!

Davin, Tori, and Sam
Ecology Center of San Francisco

Hello Friends,

The chilly days have come, but with them the springing of grasses and cold hearty wildflowers drenched from the first rains of winter. As I walked through Golden Gate Park today, the groves of Eucalyptus and Monterrey Pine, which the last few months were blanketed by a dusty and decaying drab leaf mulch, were now covered with emerald rugs of new life springing from beneath the fallen leaves.

NEW FOR ECOSF

November was quite a busy month for us, and it appears December will be no different. We had a great article written about the Ecology Center of San Francisco that you may have already seen in both the Richmond Review and the Sunset Beacon. They’re available online at www.sfrichmondreview.com (Although they’re only currently showing the November issue, December should be on their website soon).

We also broke ground, you could say, on our website. Which is still in the making, but you can pop in and take a look at www.eco-sf.org. We’re using WordPress which is a great open source software program for designing websites along the theme of a blogsite, but we’ll have much more to offer then just our rantings. It will be full of information about San Francisco ecology, including facts about our energy and water consumption as a city, as well as numerous pages of information and resources about sustainability, gardening, permaculture, green building, renewable energy, and if you don’t find something you’re interested in, let us know and we’ll research it for you. With this new website will also come a new email address with which to contact ECOSF and also our email for sending our newsletters, updates, and more. Be sure to look for an update on our Events this Month going out to you from a different email address this weekend. We don’t want to get lost in your junk mail!

Davin took a trip with his mother, Lee Wentworth, out to the Oceanside Waste Water Treatment Plant in November and will be writing a summary report of his experience and some factual data about SF’s water consumption and waste. Be sure to check the website in a few days for that article.

ECOSF and a few friends will be ending 2006 in New Orleans but it won’t be all fun and games. We’ll be heading down to the gulf state to help organizations like Common Ground Collective gut homes before they get seized, build homes with Habitat for Humanity, and plant natives and erosion prevention plants with Re-Plant New Orleans. We’ll be staying for two weeks from Dec. 22 til Jan. 4th so if anyone has any donations they would like us to bring on your behalf to any of those organizations, please let us know. More information about this will be available on our website.

PREPARE FOR THE COLD
It seems like the dropping temperatures came all of a sudden, which means its an important time to make sure your house is properly insulated so you are conserving the most amount of energy (and money) if you have to use a heater to keep you toasty. I always find bundling up works just fine. If you’re looking for advice on how to insulate your home from the creeping cold winds check out:

Winter Tips from CEC’s Consumer Energy Center

GETTING ENERGY READY FOR WINTER

Energy prices are on the rise across the nation. As a result, heating costs will consume an increasingly larger portion of a household’s energy budget. That’s why it’s important to check your home to insure that your heating dollars aren’t being wasted.

When cold weather approaches, use this checklist of simple ways to make your home more comfortable and keep those escalating energy bills at bay.

Check for Leaks

Weatherstripping and caulking is probably the least expensive, simplest, most effective way to cut down on energy waste in the winter. Improperly sealed homes can waste 10 to 15 percent of the homeowner’s heating dollars. Take these steps:

1. Check around doors and windows for leaks and drafts. Add weather-stripping and caulk any holes you see that allow heat to escape. Make sure doors seal properly.

2. If your windows leak really badly, consider replacing them with newer, more efficient ones. Keep in mind, however, that replacing windows can be expensive - it could take you quite awhile to recover your costs from the energy savings alone. But new windows also provide other benefits, such as improved appearance and comfort.

3. Every duct, wire or pipe that penetrates the wall or ceiling or floor has the potential to waste energy. Plumbing vents can be especially bad, since they begin below the floor and go all the way through the roof. Seal them all with caulking or weather-stripping.

4. Electric wall plugs and switches can allow cold air in. Purchase simple-to-install, pre-cut foam gaskets that fit behind the switch plate and effectively prevent leaks.

5. Don’t forget to close the damper on your fireplace. Of course the damper needs to be open if a fire is burning; but if the damper is open when you’re not using the fireplace, your chimney functions as a large open window that draws warm air out of the room and creates a draft. Close that damper - it’s an effective energy-saving tip that costs you nothing!

6. Examine your house’s heating ducts for leaks. Think of your ductwork as huge hoses, bringing hot air instead of water into your house. Mostly out of sight, ducts can leak for years without you knowing it. They can become torn or crushed and flattened. Old duct tape - the worse thing to use to seal ductwork, by the way - will dry up and fall away over time, allowing junctions and splices to open, spilling heated air into your attic or under the house. It’s wasteful. According to field research performed by the California Energy Commission, you can save roughly 10 percent of your heating bill by preventing leaky ducts.

Check Your Insulation

1. Insulate your attic. In an older home, that can be the most cost-efficient way to cut home heating costs. Before energy efficiency standards, homes were often built with little or no insulation. As a result, large amounts of heat can be lost through walls, floors and - since heat rises - especially ceilings.

How much insulation should you install? Typical framed homes now being built in California’s Central Valley must meet insulation requirements of R-38 insulation in ceilings and R-19 for walls and floors.
2. Weather-strip and insulate your attic hatch or door to prevent warm air from escaping out the top of your house.

3. Seal holes in the attic that lead down into the house, such as open wall tops and duct, plumbing, or electrical runs. Any hole that leads from a basement or crawlspace to an attic is a big energy waster. Cover and seal them with spray foam and rigid foam board if necessary.

Check Your Heating System

1. Get a routine maintenance and inspection of your heating system each autumn to make sure it is in good working order.

2. Replace your heater’s air filter monthly. Your heating system will work less hard, use less energy and last longer as a result. Most homeowners can replace filters and do such simple tasks as cleaning and removing dust from vents or along baseboard heaters.

3. If your heating system is old, you