by Shawn Dell Joyce

The economic downturn has left many communities looking decimated with empty lots, vacant stores, and unemployed people with too much time and too little money. Some of these people have started a positive trend across the country by taking over vacant lots, empty rooftops, and unused parks to create community gardens.  These community gardens are a great way to get both children and adults involved in beautifying the neighborhood and benefitting the community with better nutrition and green spaces.

In the Wallkill Valley, we have a few community gardens that you can be part of. The Town of Montgomery Community Garden was started by Walden Resident Richard Phelps in an effort to help preserve Montgomery’s Benedict Park. The park is located on Rte 17K one mile west of the village. The garden is in the front field on the left in two acres of high ground. The community garden is divided into 56 single plots most 20 ft x 20ft and available to be gardened singly, double, triple or in quadruple combination for $25 per plot, plus two hours of community service.

The community garden has been a community effort with donated fence posts, donated well from Tompkins Well Drilling, and a communal compost pile. The garden is open to the public, so visitors to the park can drop in and see flowers in bloom and tomatoes swelling on the vines.

In the hamlet of Wallkill, Local businessman and lifelong resident, Stewart Crowell won a grant to develop his own land into a community garden. He enlisted support from the Wallkill Public Library, the Town of Shawangunk Council, the Wallkill High School Honor Society, the Wallkill Reformed Church Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry, the Wallkill Farm Market, as well as the local community enhancement committee, Woman’s Club and Girl and Boy Scouts. Plans are underway for this effort which will compliment Crowell’s Wallkill Community Farm Market which he began last summer. 

The Wallkill Library will lend a hand by creating an “ABC’s and Edibles” children’s reading garden, teaching children about plants and veggies and incorporating the planting of seeds and plants into story time programs.  Local high school students are joining the project to lend a hand in building beds and laying mulch and harvesting and distributing the produce. By encouraging young people to participate in the process, Wallkill is fostering an appreciation of farming, and working in harmony with nature. By making it a hamlet-wide effort, residents feel a sense of pride in making our community look its best.

Why not take part in one of these community gardens now, while it is still early enough in the growing season.  For more information on the Wallkill Community Garden, please call Mr. Crowell at 341-7381, for a plot in the Town of Montgomery Community Garden,contact Richard Phelps  (845)778-2736  www.tomcomgarden.org

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

At some point today, you will probably be faced with the choice to use a disposable cup or not. Here are some factors to consider about how disposable that cup really is.

If we were to look at how much energy it takes to produce cups made from paper, polystyrene and ceramic, most people would automatically think the ceramic cup is the greenest choice. You’d have to use the ceramic cup 640 times before it would equal a polystyrene cup, and 294 times to equal a paper/cardboard cup, in terms of the energy it takes to produce the cups, according to Treehugger.com.

     In terms of air pollution, polystyrene produces the least amount of emissions to manufacture one cup. It also takes more water to manufacture a ceramic cup than the entire life cycle water consumption of the other two. Before you toss out all your ceramic cups and replace them with Styrofoam, Treehugger went on to find the ceramic vessel much more functional and durable with up to 3,000 uses compared to single-use paper, plastic or polystyrene foam.

If you go by just the energy expenditures, Styrofoam cups seem like the way to go. However, there is much more to a cup than its function. What happens to these five cups after their useful life is over?

Glass takes over a million years to decompose, but it is recyclable and when recycled it reduces pollution by 20 percent according to California’s Project New Leaf.

Paper can be recycled, but most paper cups are coated with plastic or wax and cannot be recycled. Even coated paper will biodegrade in five years, while uncoated and unbleached paper will be gone in a few days according to Worldwise.com 
 

Styrofoam and plastic do not biodegrade. Instead, they photodegrade, breaking down into smaller and smaller particles that will eventually wind up in our bodies.

Scientists are just now learning the effects of photodegrading plastics and polystyrene on the environment. These substances have only been around about 50 years and are just now breaking down into microscopic sizes. As plastics get smaller, they are eaten by smaller creatures. As these creatures are eaten by larger creatures up the food chain, these plastics (and toxins) get concentrated inside living bodies, even in humans.
 

“Except for a small amount that has been incinerated,” says Tony Andrady, a Senior Research Scientist at North Carolina’s Research Triangle, “every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last 50 years or so still remains. It’s somewhere in the environment.”  

Nothing is really disposable. Many of the things we consider disposable, will probably outlive humanity as a species.  The greenest choice is to cup your hands and drink out of them as our ancestors have for millennia.  That may not go over to well in the school cafeteria, so get in the habit of bringing your own cup.

 Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce    

Recently, we heard President Obama recommit to creating green jobs in our country after we watched in horror as China surpassed us as the world leader in green technology. But there’s positive movement on the local green front. Last week, Congressman Maurice Hinchey  announced that he’s bringing many green jobs to our area with a project at Stewart Airport. Meanwhile, municipalities have the opportunity through a new state law to create green jobs at a level that this year’s high school graduates can take advantage of, and that will benefit individual taxpayers as well.

 Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is a state law that allows local governments to help homeowners finance upgrading their homes’ energy efficiency and add solar hot water, solar electric, wind turbines, or whatever green energy is appropriate. The beauty of the program is that it makes green technology affordable and within reach of average middle-class homeowners.

Here’s an exampe of how it work. If a homeowner decides he wishes to upgrade his home to solar hot water he can “opt-in” to the PACE program through the local town or village board. The cost of the retrofit and solar installation is financed through a mortgage company tied to the property taxes. What that means is that you don’t have to put any money down on the system (in most cases) and it is paid for through your property tax bill over the next 20 years. If you sell your house, the system — and the cost – goes with the house.

The benefits are immediate. The savings on utility bills is far greater than the amortized cost of repaying the loan through property taxes. An average solar hot water system costs about $5,000 installed, after rebates and incentives. Spread that out over 20 years and you notice a rise of $250-$300 in your property tax payment compared to the dramatic savings on your electric bill (18 percent and more in most cases.)

This makes pricey solar panels within the reach of average homeowners and protects mortgage lenders because the payment is secured through the municipality. It lowers the homeowner’s cost of living and raises property values.

PACE programs are planned or already under way in Albuquerque, NM; Athens, OH; Austin, TX; Babylon, NY; Berkeley, CA (which pioneered the concept); Boulder, CO; Palm Desert, CA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; and Santa Fe, NM; and at the state level in California, Connecticut, Maryland, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. New York recently passed PACE as well, and is offering municipalities the possibility of implementing the program.

Under the State Energy Program, the Department of Energy has received approximately $80 million worth of applications that could potentially use a PACE financing structure, out of $3.2 billion in total funding. The Department of Energy is also issuing a Funding Opportunity Announcement of $454 million under its Competitive Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program. This “Retrofit Ramp-Up” program will pioneer innovative models, including PACE loans, for rolling out energy efficiency to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in a variety of communities.

Orange County Planning Commissioner David Church is setting up grant opportunities for municipalities to implement PACE. What is your municipal government doing about it? Most of our local elected officials run on a platform of lowering taxes. While that has been proven difficult at best, what they could do is lower our cost of living instead for the same net effect.

There’s another benefit. If only 15 percent of residential property owners nationwide took advantage of clean energy community financing, the resulting emissions reductions would contribute 4 percent of the savings needed for the U.S. to reach 1990 emissions levels by 2020 according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

This one program could do more to generate green jobs in our area than anything coming down the federal pike. Imagine the resulting boom this legislation would have in the building trades. We would immediately see a rise in jobs for energy auditors, insulators, plumbers, solar installers, and many other local jobs that our children could do with a little training.

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning, nationally syndicated columnist, artist, and director of the Wallkill River School in Orange County. Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Heirloom Peppers, a pastel of all the varieties of peppers grown on local farms. Notice how brilliant and colorful our fresh produce is. These local peppers are in season in the late summer. Check out more from my Heirloom Series at www.ShawnDellJoyce.com. Come take a class with me at the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Rep. Maurice Hinchey has made a startling statement — that the concentration of wealth in the U.S. is the same today as it was in the 1920’s with the highest concentration of dollars in the hands of the wealthiest few. It seems that most of those wealthy hands don’t live in the Wallkill Valley.

We must create our own economic stimulus if we are to weather the current economic climate. One way that we can all do this is by interweaving our businesses and households with other local businesses and farms.  What I mean by this is generating economic impact in our hometowns by keeping our money flowing in the local economy, and passing through local business after local business.
One way we do this in Montgomery is through a band of village businesses called Montgomery Business Association. We work together to bring cultural tourism to our quaint historic village. We also look for ways to connect our businesses and lower our operating costs.

For example, I’m the director of the nonprofit Wallkill River School. We are working with Ms. Claire’s Musical Cupboard on summer programs for children. We will share the cost of a locally-printed brochure which advertises both businesses.
The way this act generates local economic impact is that $100 comes in to Ms. Claire’s Musical Cupboard from a parent enrolling their child. Part of that $100 pays the teacher who lives locally, part goes to pay rent to a local landlord, and toward advertising that helps benefit Wallkill River School by lowering our advertising costs as well. Net result, several local businesses have benefitted by one parent buying local.

Looking at a larger scale, I traced the economic impact of the Wallkill River School on our local community.  Last year, we had 806 adult enrollments in 131 classes, and 174 child enrollments in 30 classes bringing in a gross of $77,156. Additionally, we offered a comprehensive free teen art class program offering 20 classes to 194 local teen enrollments, and a free Senior’s class serving  780 drop-ins per year almost equaling attendance in our paying classes.

Of the $77,156 brought in by art classes,  half was paid out to the local artists who taught the classes. The other $38,500 goes toward paying staff salaries; both employees live in the community and pay local property taxes.  And part went to paying utility bills, insurance (through a local broker) and refreshment costs.  The gallery part of our business pays the rent which goes to our local landlord and patron, Ed Devitt.
We created economic impact in our home community by partnering with James Douglas Gallery for framing, and sending him thousands of dollars of framing business. We also generate business for a local art supply store, Newburgh Art Supply. We partnered with several local farms including joining the Share of the Harvest Program at Sycamore Farms to provide local foods picnic lunch for our summer outdoor painting class and for still life objects, Hoeffner’s Farm for seasonal decorations like cut flowers, pine drapes and wreaths, mums, etc.

Another way we found to generate economic impact is to partner with several local restaurants including Wildfire Grill, Ward’s Bridge Inn, and Iron Café to provide lunches for our classes generating more than $3,000 in lunch revenues for these businesses. All together, our economic impact on this community was to pay out more than $80,000 to other local businesses and residents, creating a multiplier effect as they, in turn, support other local businesses and pay local taxes.
I hope our model of doing business gives you some ideas of ways that your business and family can also stimulate the local economy.  This is common sense stimulus, which, to me, makes more sense then handing over a massive federal debt to our grandchildren.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

OK, I’ll admit it. January often tests my commitment to eating local. I’m running low on things I canned, dried, or froze over the summer, and most farms are closed. Meanwhile, the grocery store produce aisles are brimming with ripe watermelons, peaches, grapes and other fresh produce flown thousands of miles from the tropics to our frozen black dirt. Why would anyone pass up this fossil-fueled abundance?

“My immediate answer,” says farmer and locavore Linda Borghi, “is to look deeply into the eyes of a five-year-old. What kind of world are we leaving them? It’s all about carbon emissions and your footprint. By eating as much as we can within a 100-mile radius (of our home) we are able to reduce our carbon footprint by close to 40 percent.”

While forty percent of your carbon emissions sounds like a lofty number, remember that about 30 percent of world carbon emissions are caused by burning rainforests for beef and biofuels, according to the Rainforest Fund. Add to that the 15 percent of emissions caused by the transporting produce thousands of miles according to the National Academy of Science, and Borghi’s estimate falls on the low side.

If you are looking for fresh greens, local meats and eggs, fruits and vegetables, here are the places I go to all winter.

      ·         Pennings Farm in Warwick has an indoor farm market on the weekends with many O.C. farmers including Kiernan Farm (Gardiner) offering organic, pastured beef,  Late Bloomer Farm (Montgomery) offering greens, local grains and flours, root vegetables, local cheeses, apples, wines, and many others. Hours are 11am-4pm on the weekends; www.penningsfarmmarket.com (845) 986-1059

·         Jones Farm on 190 Angola Road does a bustling business in the winter with the “largest gift store in the region,” according to co-owner David Clearwater. Their farm features fresh fall apples, homemade fudge, a bakery, gourmet foods, and many other goodies. Open 8am-5pm weekends, and until 6pm during the week. www.JonesFarmInc.com, (845) 534-4445.

·         Quaker Creek Store, 767 Pulaski Highway, Pine Island, (845) 258-4570, open Mon-Fri. 7am-6pm, Sat. 7am-4pm. Try their prepared foods like wonderful stuffed cabbage (local), pirogies with local potatoes and onions, Cajun Andouille with local ingredients.

·         Soons Orchards, 23 Soons Circle, New Hampton. Soons is probably famous for their pies, but you can find local garlic, vegetables, apples, pears, fresh ground peanut or almond butter, mixes for dips or soups, jars of salsa, jam and jellies, honey, and maple syrup, among other items. Open to the public 9-5:30 every day. www.SoonsOrchards.com, (845) 374-5471

·         Walnut Grove Farm in the Town of Crawford, offers frozen pasture raised organic beef, pork, chicken, bacon, pies and jars of jams and jellies by appointment. Ned Roebuck (845) 313-4855 www.WalnutGroveFarms.net

·         Blooming Hill Farm 1251 Route 208, in Washingtonville. Guy Jones and sister; Cindy Jones, offer many varieties of potatoes, squash, cold-hardy lettuces, and chards, root vegetables, onions, broccoli some fruits, eggs, Sat. from 9-2 through April.  782-7310 www.bloominghillfarm.com

·         W. Rogowski Farm, 327-329 Glenwood Road, Pine Island, 258-4423, has an organic farm stand open year round. You can currently find apples, pears, shallots, turnips, beets, garlic, onions (of course) potatoes, greens of many varieties including Asian, chili peppers, squashes, turnips, radishes, cabbages, dried beans, and processed things like jellies, honey, maple syrup, sugar and crème. Sat. from 9-2 until spring.  www.rogowskifarm.com

Shawn Dell Joyce is the founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, and an author of “Orange County Bounty” local foods cookbook. Shawn@zestoforange.com

This is a portrait of the late Orange County doyenne Amy Bull Crist. The portrait will be donated to the new educational center in her name being built on her family’s ancestral farm of Hill-Hold. I had only a photocopy of a photo to work from and am not sure I’ve captured her. I would love to hear what you folks think. Shawn@zestoforange.com

 By Shawn Dell Joyce

 If you are making a list of New Year’s resolutions for 2010 that include things like losing weight, being healthier, spending more time with family, and reconnecting with friends, how about looking at it another way. Ask yourself instead, “What impact am I making on my family and community?”

No Impact Man asked himself this question and found himself on a year-long challenge of living lightly in New York City with his small family and leaving little or no environmental impact. His family’s experience has recently been turned into a documentary, a book, and an online challenge at www.noimpactproject.org.

Could you avoid buying anything new (besides local produce) for one week? The No Impact Challenge asks you to start by stopping shopping for new things. Instead, repair broken things, make something yourself, or find used items at garage sales, Freecycle.com or Craig’s List. With the time you save by not shopping, host a clothing swap party, or play date with your family.

When Beavan began his experiment he stockpiled his family’s trash for a week to figure out what disposable items they could stop consuming and throwing away without sacrificing their happiness or comfort. He sorted the garbage into categories; disposables used less than ten minutes, and more than ten minutes, and things that they could live without. He equipped each family member with their own reusable drinking cup, containers, utensils, cloth napkins, and reusable bags. After giving up all disposable products, their level of happiness and satisfaction actually increased.

Beavan and his family invested in a rickshaw as their main transportation in NYC. We live in a commuting suburb and most of us spend an average of 1,000 hours annually behind the wheel. What would you do with all that extra time if you found other transportation? Half the trips we take in cars are less than 2 miles away and could be done on bicycle, roller skates, or foot with the side effect of improving our health and reducing our waistlines. Many of our local villages like Montgomery have recently improved sidewalks, and taken steps to encourage walking and bicycling.

Beavan’s family went without electricity for their no impact challenge. While that is extreme for us, most of our children watch more than four hours of t.v. every day. What if we all turned the darn things off and went for a walk in one of the lovely open spaces like Walden’s new rail trail, or Montgomery’s Benedict Park? Our children would feel more connected to the land and the seasons, and suffer less advertising.

Ironically, most of the food that the Beavan family consumed was probably grown in our area and sold at the farmer’s markets in NYC. Eating local in the winter requires more thought and planning than buying prepackaged foods in the supermarket. Several local farms are open year round in our area like Blooming Hill Farm and Soon’s Orchards. If you eat lunch outside of the house, make it yourself in a reusable container. If you substitute things grown locally for imports on your shopping list, like apples for bananas, you keep money flowing in our local economy.

The final part of No Impact Man’s Challenge involves volunteering for local nonprofits. “The final stage was to me the most important,” blogs Beavan.”The final stage was not about conservation. It was about innovation. And it was in this stage that I met new people and made the most friends. It was here that the people were most excited. It was not about doing less harm. It was about doing more good. It was less about limits and more about possibility.”

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, N.Y.  shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

It seems as if after Thanksgiving, the major news in our country is shopping and whether retail sales will top last year’s sales. And spend we will! We spend an average of $856 per person on the holidays, according to the American Research Group.

Unfortunately, most of our hard-earned dollars will go straight to China because more than 70 percent of the goods on store shelves are from there. If we multiply that by the current U.S. population, that’s about $180 billion leaving home for the holidays.

A recent economic study conducted in Austin, Texas, found that if each household in Travis County (population 921,006) simply redirected $100 of planned holiday spending from chain stores (carrying cheap imports) to the stores of local merchants, the local economic impact would reach approximately $10 million. Imagine how $10 million would boost your community’s economy.

On average, we spend between 20 and 40 hours shopping for holiday gifts and waiting in long lines. You easily could make most of your holiday gifts in that time and have the added bonus of time shared as a family. If you are buying gifts or giving money, you are cheating your loved ones. Instead, give gifts of time. Offer to change your elderly relatives’ light bulbs to compact fluorescents, or give them coupons good for a free day’s worth of caulking and winterizing. Those are things they could really use, and time spent together will benefit all of you.

Holidays should be about time well spent, not money. In the land where we have plenty of food, noise and gizmos, those are the things we cherish.
Here are a few ideas for adding more joy to your household and community this holiday season:

— Spend less time shopping, and make gingerbread men with your children one afternoon. Put the gingerbread men on decorative plates, and drop in on each neighbor to spread cheer.

— Pump money into the local economy by making donations to the food bank. That money will help families in your neighborhood more surely than money spent at a national chain store.

— Ask young children to pick out toys to buy and donate them to one of the Toys for Tots programs.

— Have a family meeting to decide on a spending limit, and figure out what imaginative gifts you can make together.

— This time of year is craft fair season and most churches and community groups offer at least one. Craft fairs are great opportunities to support local producers directly and keep your holiday spending local.

— On Christmas Day, once the gifts are opened, don’t let it be anticlimactic. Instead, spread birdseed and crumbled cookies outside for the wild things. Take a plate of food to a neighborhood shut-in or someone who has to work.

— Do something wonderful for someone else — anonymously.

Shawn@zestoforange.com