I am sitting here in the living room at The Urban Farm. It is Sunday night January 31st. The news just reported that a group of singers will be rerecording the song We Are The World. In 1985 the song moved me. Today I purchased it on iTunes and reremembered why I do what I do – the song moves me as much today as it did then.

Every day I have to keep reminding myself why I do what I do. It is more a feeling than something specific – the song reminds me…

We Are The World

There comes a time
When we heed a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
And it’s time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

We can’t go on
Pretending day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change
We are all a part of
God’s great big family
And the truth, you know love is all we need

[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me

Send them your heart
So they’ll know that someone cares
And their lives will be stronger and free
As God has shown us by turning stone to bread
So we all must lend a helping hand

When you’re down and out
There seems no hope at all
But if you just believe
There’s no way we can fall
Well, well, well, well, let us realize
That a change will only come
When we stand together as one

[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
It’s true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me

THAT is why I do what I do. Because I can. It is MY duty to leave the planet a better place…Every Day. FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. Because I can. I can make a difference and I do every day with every choice I make. Choices made from love. If not me then who will do it. If not you then who. This is your call to stand up and change the world. Even if it is only in your little corner – just do it!!!

In the chorus there is a line

There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives

That couldn’t be more true or poignant today what it comes to our living on our Mother earth.

Why do you do what you do? That is what I want to know. Please post a comment here, ask your friends, pass this post along to everyone that you know. It’s time we step up to the plate and make a difference.

How do you make a difference? Tell me.

Greg from my couch, January 31st, 2010. Looking to make THE biggest difference of my life in the next 11 months.

Remember you can and do make a difference every day.

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Technorati Tags: Art Ludwig, Creating an Oasis with Greywater, green living, Greg Peterson, greywater, Urban Farm

I am NOT a fan of being cold so I am constantly looking for things to be happy about in the winter.  One of my extreme pleasures is that citrus is ‘in season’ or ripe from November until I finish picking it in the spring.  Unlike peaches, citrus stores very nicely on the tree.

My foray into fruit trees started in ernest when I bought the Urban Farm in 1989, but I primarily planted stone fruit (any fruit with a pit in the middle) and pome fruit (apples and pears.)  Then about 5 years ago I got the citrus bug and started planting oranges like a madman.  I believe that fruit trees are like art.  You don’t buy art you don’t like, so why should you plant a fruit tree that you don’t like.  Using this theory I planted 14 navel orange trees in my front yard.  Well in reality they are not trees, they are more like a shrub standing no taller than 6 feet tall and I use them on the perimeter of my front yard as a fence.  It actually works really well.

One might ask why the heck I would plant so many navel oranges?  I love navels and in any given week when they are in season I can eat 20 or 30 pounds and THAT is a lot of oranges.  The nice thing about this particular winter is that my production is almost keeping up with my desire for them.  That makes me a very happy camper especially with the price of fruit these days.

Technorati Tags: citrus, edible landscaping, Greg Peterson, Urban Farm, Urban orcharding

Hey all,  This is a great story and an easy way to create your own garden. Greg

My Instant Garden
By Parri Willie
Phoenix, AZ

When I was a little girl we lived in New Jersey, and my mom always had a garden — growing green beans and tomatoes among other things. I can remember going out in the summer months and picking the beans and eating them right where I picked them. When I was 25 I moved to Phoenix. Living in the “desert” I didn’t think it was possible to recreate that garden. And then, 2 years ago, after a tour of the Urban Farm I realized it is VERY possible.

My home is a typical Phoenix tract home in a development where every house has colored rock for a yard. To remove the rock and dig up the ground underneath seemed like a huge undertaking and then I could only hope that the dirt there would sustain a garden. It would be much more practical and successful, I thought, to build a raised garden and fill it with proper soil and compost.

Planning to build a raised-bed garden that was 5 foot x 10 foot and 12 inches deep, I enlisted the help of a friend and we purchased three nice quality pieces of pine, 10 foot long x 2 inches wide x 12 inches tall and enough brackets and screws to hold all the sides together. We cut one of the boards in half for the 5 foot ends of the garden and then connected the four sides together securely with the brackets. After raking away much of the rock from our selected area, we set this outer “shell” of our garden down, made sure it was level and then filled it with a mixture of organic soil and compost. After planting my chosen vegetables, I wrapped a wall of chicken wire around the outside of the garden to protect my veggies from our little rabbit visitors. This garden project was fairly easy, cost under $100, and took less than a day to put together.

This past summer I successfully grew tomatoes, zucchini, strawberries and green beans, and, yes, I picked the beans and ate them right there in the yard. Some sections of the garden didn’t grow as well as others so I spent time fertilizing and moving the soil around a bit before getting the fall garden planted. I expect to harvest, red and yellow onions, broccoli, sweet peas, eggplant, tomatoes, 2 kinds of lettuce, spinach and carrots as my winter crop.

Part of the thrill of having my garden is the sense of accomplishment in seeing the plants grow and produce food, but a bigger part is knowing that I am feeding my family healthy, organic food that is full of nutrients and free of pesticides and chemicals. I can definitely see adding another garden box at a later date and doubling my harvest!

Technorati Tags: edible landscape, gardening, Greg Peterson, Instant Garden, Living Green, Parri Willie, permaculture, Urban Garden

Twenty years ago I started planting fruit trees here at the Urban Farm and I have to tell you it has gotten…well not out of hand, but productive.  I have just over 80 fruit trees planted on the 1/3 acre.  Included in the mix of fruit trees is citrus (Cara Cara and Washington navel, Trovita and AZ Sweet oranges, Limequats, Meyer lemons,) eight different varieties of peaches, four different varieties of apples, apricot, plum, fig, quince, pomegranate, Asian pear and loquat.  A bit extreme perhaps, but my goal is to have ripe fruit growing in my yard every month of the year.

Have you ever thought about growing your own fruit trees but the prospect just seemed to daunting? With a new concept called “Backyard Orchard Culture,” planting and managing a large orchard of small trees is a piece of cake. The key to such high density plantings is to keep the trees small; most of the trees here at the Urban Farm are not over 10 feet tall plus I use the edges of the yard leaving the middle open for play.

The concept of Backyard Orchard Culture allows for fresh fruit to be harvested throughout the entire growing season. By planting an early season, mid season and late season peach varieties I am blessed with peaches in April, May, June and July.

A while back I cowrote an article on Backyard Orchard Culture with my friend Maura Yates where I dive in deeper to the whole concept.  Check it out and enjoy.

Technorati Tags: apples, apricots, fruit trees, Greg Peterson, peaches, Urban Farm, Urban orcharding

Green or Not….That is the question. How do we go about getting through the process of discovering if a product is truly green? Better yet is there really a truly green product?  Huge caveat here – there is really no such thing a completely green product, as the process of creating a product inherently has an environmental impact.  Therefore really what we are determining is a scale of greenness from ‘not green at all’ to ‘very green’…and everything in between.  That inherently is the problem.

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) as it is called is quite a process and is used to determine the environmental impact of a product. Simply put doing an LCA requires research from the beginning of the thought process of creating the product till the end of its lifecycle…and everything in between.  Which as you can imagine is a tedious process.

Other terms you may have heard on the topic are “cradle to grave” was one of the first renditions of the concept that did not address the afterlife of a product.  That then morphed into a concept called “cradle to cradle” which was outlined very nicely in a book called Cradle to Cradle/Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.  All very deep thinking if you want to study it.

While you do that I will each week pick a topic, review the generalities around it and then pose to you the question “Green or Not?”

So the Huffington Post published a post last month about NASCAR going green.  My gut reaction was one of ‘yeah right’ until I pondered the article a little.

Here are some things to think about…

Yea’s – The campaign:

• Raises awareness
• Is making some impact – especially in recycling of the oil
• Hybrid race cars – proves to fans that hybrids are quick and reliable

Nay’s

• Nascar is a large user of fuel
• Impact of accidents on environment – no way around crashes and fires
• Environmental impact on raceways and the surrounding areas once races are finished – degradation of land because they do become small cities
• The amount of trash that is produced on the site

Technorati Tags: Cars, Environment, Green Energy, Green News, Green or Not?, Green Technology, Nascar, Video

Click the player below to listen to your Mother…ItsYourMotherCalling New Years Resolution, that is.

If Mother Nature truly had a voice what would she say? Give Mother Earth a voice and see what comes out. Messages with a green twist from your other mother…Mother Nature. Gentle reminders. Maybe you’ve heard them before.

“When you have your own apartment, you can make the rules.”

Sound familiar? There’s probably not a mother on the planet who hasn’t used that line. And, now, ANOTHER mother is finding her voice and delivering those same “mom-isms.” Mother Nature says:

“When you have your own planet, you can make the rules.”

She’s kept quiet all these years while her kids have stomped, four-wheeled, drilled and dumped all over her. Finally she’s speaking out! That is the premise behind ItsYourMotherCalling.  To take home your own piece of Mother Nature check in with her at www.ItsYourMotherCalling.com

Get your weekday dose at:  Facebook and Twitter

Plus check in here each week for an audio message from Her.  Listen to this week’s message from your Mother…ItsYourMotherCalling New Years Resolution

Technorati Tags: Greg Peterson speaker writer, its your mother calling, itsyourmothercalling.com, Living Green, The Urban Farm, Urban Farm

My daily mission is to inspire people into their own level of greenness.

As I go through life doing this people sometimes share with me that it is too expensive for them to go green, stating that they can’t afford a new hybrid car or solar panels.  When in reality there are so many things that we all can do for little or no money to live a green lifestyle and that in some cases can actually saves us money.

Living green is paying attention to the resources that we use in a manner that reduces our future impact. It is a multifaceted process that touches our health, the environment and our pocketbooks.  It also involves many choices along the way. Mostly they are choices of awareness.

• Can you use just one straw at a restaurant or in my case no straws at all?
• Can you plan your errands so you can drive out once and do multiple tasks?
• Can purchase a stainless steel water bottle?

Technorati Tags: Greg Peterson speaker writer, Living Green, No more straws, The Urban Farm, Urban Farm

Hey all,

Last fall I wrote a book called Grow Wherever You Go where I explore the different places our gardens can live.  One of the things that I did in the book was to reach out to the community for their urban farm stories.   I have to tell you I received some incredible stories and was inspired by what I read.  Each Tuesday I will be posting a new inspiring urban farm stories from all over the world.  I actually received a response that I will post in the coming weeks from Thailand – woohoo.

My first post is about my friend Mike Lieberman the Fire Escape Gardener in New York City…Really – this is really incredible – check it out.

Mike Lieberman
Fire Escape Gardener in New York City

I just started my fire escape garden in the spring of 2009. I wanted to reconnect with my food supply because it seems like we just kind of think of produce as “growing” in grocery store. We’ve kind of lost perspective on how food really grows. I was reading a book on eating locally and was amazed to learn that, on average, food travels up to 2,000 miles from the farm to our tables. Since I eat a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits I wanted to cut down on my food budget and get better connected with my food. I joined my local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and started going to farmer’s markets but even that food is grown far away or treated with pesticides. So I started reading more and asking for information from the growers at the farmer’s markets. You might think this is crazy, considering I live in an apartment in New York City, but it all came together when I discovered self-watering containers that I could make to fit in a space as small as a fire escape landing.

I made modified versions of ones that I saw online and was able to make them out of mostly recycled materials in 20 to 30 minutes for under $5. I put the directions on my website directions for the planters I make out of coffee cans, gallon jugs and two liter soda bottles. I cut the bottom part of the soda bottles off, reinforced them with duct tape and was able to hang them on the fire escape railing. All of this has been done within the fire code and apartment regulations and now I enjoy kale, Swiss chard, lettuce, sweet peppers, chili peppers, cherry tomatoes, basil, apple mint, Greek oregano and a type of parsley.

When you really think about it, food is essential to our lives and I want fresh real food, not the great science experiment that we call processed or GMO’d food. I was told that food has changed more in the last 50 years than it did in the 1,000 years prior. I didn’t go to school or get a fancy certificate to do this and I’m not preachy, but I did start a website to show people how easy and really delicious it is to grow some of your own fresh, pesticide free food…even on a fire escape!

Technorati Tags: Fire Escape Gardner in New York City, Greg Peterson, Mike Lieberman, Urban Farm