Ways to Connect With Local Food

Jun 13, 2019

By Sustainable Solano

At Sustainable Solano, some of our deepest commitments to sustainability, health and community are tied to the importance of food. It is critical not only to provide access to healthy food, but also to support the local farmers, chefs and others that help us bring that bounty to our tables.

One of the challenges we’ve run into is how to draw attention to the different parts of the food system. Toward that end, we’ve created a new page on the site that highlights local food happenings and maps out local farms, farm stands and retail, CSAs, farmers markets, retreats and wineries.

We believe a functioning local food system is a collaborative network that ensures environmental sustainability, economic viability for farmers and others working in the food chain, responsible waste management practices and equal access to fresh, healthy food by all members of our communities.

Toward this end, Sustainable Solano has taken steps to strengthen our food system here in Solano County.

We’ve organized a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Center in Benicia, and we’re starting one in Fairfield as we look for other possible sites around the county. We also hold regular “What’s for Dinner?” cooking workshops to help county residents learn new dishes to cook with seasonal vegetables. Meanwhile, we continue to explore new ways to connect farmers with local customers, whether institutional buyers seeking healthy food or individuals wanting a more sustainable way of putting food on the table that supports the local economy.

Learn more about our local food efforts here.

You’ll find the map below on the new local food happenings page. If you click the icon on the top left of the map, you can select different types of properties and learn a bit about them.

As for the local food happenings, we’ve included upcoming events, such as festivals and workshops on cooking local food, as well as ways to get involved in the local food system, whether arranging a tour with a local farm, subscribing to a CSA membership that secures you a part of the harvest or exploring other agricultural adventures.

If you would like to see anything highlighted that isn’t on the map or event list at this time, please contact Allison Nagel at allison@sustainablesolano.org for consideration.

Learn How to Create a Food Forest Garden as Part of Vallejo’s First Resilient Neighborhood

Jun 11, 2019

By Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano and dozens of community members have been hard at work in the past few weeks creating the first Resilient Neighborhood in Vallejo through the new Resilient Neighborhoods pilot project.

Already, homeowners, neighbors and community members have come together to turn a water-hungry lawn into a water-wise front yard, dig water-grabbing swales to capture roof water and rainwater, and plant trees to offer shade and fruit and other beneficial plants. Projects have also included features such as a hugelkultur, which creates a raised garden bed using wood yard waste, and an herb spiral that creates microclimates for different herbs to grow.

Anyone interested in learning how to do these things hands-on will have another opportunity starting this weekend as volunteers take on the fourth home in this pilot project.

Come and see what it takes to transform a barren yard into a food forest garden oasis and bring these ideas back to your own home!

The free, educational workshops start at 9 a.m. and are scheduled until 4 p.m., though participants who can only give an hour or two are also encouraged to stop in. Lunch will be provided.

Here are the activities planned for the coming weekends (click the links for more details and to register for the free workshops):

There will also be a small celebration on June 29 to recognize all of the work that has been done to build this Resilient Neighborhood, ending the workday with a frozen treat for participants.

The workshops at this home are funded through the Solano County Water Agency. The Resilient Neighborhoods program is funded through the PG&E Corporation Foundation.

From Hugelkultur to Harvest: First Resilient Neighborhood Brings Together Community

May 31, 2019

By Joanna Palmer, Resilient Neighborhood Homeowner

Last Saturday, my neighbors and I were incredibly touched to see how many people came out to help us install permaculture features in our yards. Around 20 volunteers showed up early on a weekend morning to our block in Vallejo’s Morningside Addition to dig swales, plant trees, mulch and build garden beds.

Throughout the day, neighbors kept dropping by to ask what was going on, and in some cases offer to help out — I think I met more people in one day than I have since the first few weeks of moving to the neighborhood. We had snacks and cold drinks to offer them, but hopefully soon we’ll have something more special: homegrown fruit from the many trees Sustainable Solano helped us plant. If all goes according to plan, in a few years they’ll be providing a harvest much bigger than we can possibly consume on our own.

So many things are better when they’re shared: work, food, knowledge. Sustainable Solano’s permaculturists offered an abundance of the latter on Saturday. We learned how to dig a swale to collect rainwater runoff; how to plan a hugelkultur, a raised mound for recycling yard waste that creates great soil; and how to build an herb spiral that creates tiny little microclimates for growing many different plants in a small space.

Creating the hugelkultur garden bed at one home and the herb spiral at another

My partner and I are recent transplants from the East Coast, and this project represents a realization of so many of our hopes for moving to California. We were drawn here by the natural beauty, the weather that makes living outdoors year-round so appealing, and the easygoing lifestyle. Vallejo in particular seemed to offer a chance to make our home in one of the few places left in the Bay Area that’s still full of multigenerational families with a community-minded orientation.

Strong communities will be essential to thrive in the world that’s coming, and I’m so grateful to Sustainable Solano for providing us with this vehicle to start building one. Over the long term, I hope we can use this project as a foundation for an array of different offerings. I’d love to help develop a food-sharing network, workshops and a hub for disaster-preparedness resources.

More immediately, I’m just really excited to be learning so much.

Joanna is part of the Vallejo pilot project in the Resilient Neighborhoods program, which is funded through a grant from the PG&E Corporation Foundation.

Learn more about this Resilient Neighborhoods pilot project in Vallejo here.

Interested in learning some of these techniques to bring to your own community?

Register for the upcoming workshops at the links below:

June 1: Greywater and Lawn Conversion
June 8: Understory, Drip and Water-Capture Feature
June 15: Swales, Mulch, Trees, Hugelkultur
June 22: Laundry-to-Landscape Greywater Installation
June 29: Understory and Drip Irrigation

We hope to see you there!

Celebrating Sustainable Landscape Designer Kathleen Huffman

May 28, 2019

By Sustainable Solano

Kathleen (center) watches the video tribute to her work

It was a bittersweet farewell for our sustainable landscape designer Kathleen Huffman last week as she finished her last food forest project for Sustainable Solano and prepared to move home to Oklahoma. Since first joining forces with Sustainable Solano four years ago, Kathleen has worked to shape and grow our sustainable landscaping efforts, building gardens and friendships along the way.

Videographer David Avery created this touching tribute video to Kathleen’s work and the mission that drives her.

Kathleen Huffman- The Repurposed Okie from David Avery on Vimeo.

Kathleen will be moving to take care of family, but also to bring her skills and knowledge to her 10-acre family farm, where she will showcase sustainability and permaculture. We look forward to seeing how she continues to share her insight with others and spread the seeds of more sustainable living.

In the coming weeks, we’ll share with you about the designers who are stepping in to help us with our future projects as we continue to grow our work on the strong foundation Kathleen leaves behind.

Monthly Permaculture Talks and Tour in Fairfield

Nov 27, 2018

By: Susan Hiland (Daily Republic)

[Daily Republic Full Article]

Larry Lamoreux came out Saturday to see the sustainable garden at the former Mission Solano shelter. He is a member of the Sustainable Solano board and practices those principles at home in his backyard. “I just came out to keep an eye on what’s going on,” Lamoreux said. “It is such an encouraging project.”

Sustainable Solano offers practical ways of applying permaculture principles in your garden and community through its monthly “Walk the Talk” series, which takes place the last Saturday of the month at the shelter at 310 Beck Ave. Topics vary from sustainable landscaping to wise water use, soil building and other aspects of permaculture. These talks are free and open to the community, but registration is required.

Lamoreux said he is excited about the idea of swales, which take rainwater from the roof and run it to a ditch in the yard. The ditch is covered with mulch. “The mulch slowly allows for the water to be taken up by the plants,” he said. “This makes so much more sense than trying to use rain barrels because of the Mediterranean climate we live in.”

Swales save thousands of gallons of water from being wasted and puts it all into use, he said. Sustainable landscaper Jeffrey Barton talked Saturday about permaculture on a community scale and the impact of its principles on people, health and habitat.

The presentation illustrated how massive amounts of free food are being grown by community members on both private and public land, nourishing the surrounding community and serving as an educational lab for people interested in creating resiliency and living more sustainably.

The small gathering Saturday heard about food forest gardens, which can be fed by secondary water (a laundry-to-landscape greywater system or diverted roof water).

“We can create community spaces with food forests,” Barton said.

The former Mission Solano put in a food forest garden in December with a 1,300-square-foot space filled with fruiting trees and edible plants, something Barton helped see to fruition.

“Our culture treats rainwater like it is a nuisance in our society,” Barton said. But rainwater is a free source that can be captured and with a little bit of work made to work for the community in a food garden. “The work they are doing for a sustainable garden makes me hopeful,” Lamoreux said. “With the way we are treating the Earth . . . this is hope for our future.”