Spring Is....


"Spring is in the cock's crow, in the smell of freshly turned earth. It is no longer wise for the nature lover to procrastinate."

So says a favorite, unattributed quote that I found in the early days of FarmHands-CityHands.

And now, you don't have to wait!

Soon, our "Call to Open Farms" will give you hundreds of ways and means of going back to and giving to the land.

Stay tuned.

Meantime, here's hoping you ENJOY the Full Pink Moon and will make the most of EarthDay!

Warmly and looking forward,
Wendy Dubit aka Biodiesel Babe.

Water Ways....


In case it hadn't occurred to you already: We are the water!

And it's up to us to preserve and protect this increasingly rare, at-risk resource in all the educated, vigilant and enjoyable ways we can.

To learn the latest on a subject we know and love, Amelia Amon and I treated ourselves to info-packed World Water Day at the American Museum of Natural History, where pamphlets and panels abounded about The International Year of Sanitation.

Earlier that week, a few of us from The Producers' Project had been struck by Andy Revkin's New York Times piece:
2.6 Billion With No Place to Go (to the Toilet).

We'd interviewed Andy for The Evolving Ecology of New York -- a documentary that explored how much we had evolved and devolved since the days of cholera epidemics and dead horses contaminating our drinking water...and that emphasized education as key to caring about, co-existing with, preserving and stewarding our natural resources.

Another TPP documentary, Living with the River found students examining The Hudson River’s environmental health as well as its economic and social importance. Students determined the health of the Hudson through water quality testing, experimentations and identification of plant and animal species; studied and documented the river’s past, present, present and future; made environmental observations and recommendations; and interviewed experts from the Department of Environmental Protection, the Coalition for a Livable West Side, Clearwater, the Hudson River Project and more.

We became increasingly aware of, involved with, responsible for and happy about what was happening in our own home waterways. But we were horrified to learn that an estimated 700,000 children a year die from preventable diseases and ailments because they lack clean water and adequate facilities.

Time spent studying our local waterways, flora, fauna, landscape and humanscape and interviewing experts from The American Museum of Natural History, The New York Historical Society, The New York Botanic Gardens and the The New York Times had led to a sense of our inter-connectedness -- personal and collective, local and global, environmental, economic and more.

"Even more so than we are what we eat," said one TPP participant, "We are water. (Blood is 83% water.) And we are the world."

What are we doing to and for our water...and for the billions of people around the world who lack adequate access to it?

We're learning more, making plans, taking action, speaking out, doing what we can...and hoping you will join us!

Warmly,
Wendy Dubit
The Renewables: Thinkable is Doable and
The Producers'Project: A New Lens on Learning