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It is thought that Kentucky was home to the nation’s first commercial winery. After a drop in production during prohibition and the following decades, bluegrass vintners are making a comeback, even though they have limited options for hocking their wares.
If any of this is interesting to you, then you may want to tune in to KET on Thursday for Vintage Kentucky: The Vine To Wine Experience.
Business First reports that the 30-minute documentary is produced by “Louisville advertising, public relations and marketing agency New West LLC, the Kentucky Grape and Wine Council and the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.”
At 8 PM, KET will air KQED’s documentary film version of Michael Pollan’s book The Botany of Desire.
Here’s a trailer:
And Mental Floss has a preview of the movie with a rundown of the four agricultural products discussed in the film–Apples, tulips, cannabis and potatoes.
You may have missed it last week, but Diane Rehm did a show on urban farming for the public good. Topics discussed include: where to put produce plants in urban areas and how to distribute the food.
The guests are:
Darrin Nordahl, city designer, The Davenport Design Center, a division of the Community & Economic Development Department of the City of Davenport, Iowa.
Teva Dawson, horticulture inspector for the city of Des Moines, Iowa
Ryan Hertz, principal, Eco Zoic Detroit
Sam Adams, Mayor, Portland Oregon
A well-maintained lawn might look good, but what has that grass done for you lately? OPB news has a story on yard farms. In Portland, a group of industrious homeowners have set up a sharecropping system that transforms lawns into tiny patches of farmland.
Members of the Sellwood Garden Club offer up their lawns and foot the water bill. In exchange, they get a delivery of produce every week.
Farms like this are changing the definition of urban agriculture.
Steve Cohen coordinates food policy programs at Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. He says having urban planners think about food at all is a fairly recent development.
Steve Cohen: “They thought about transportation, they thought about open space, they thought about housing. But food, which is a very basic requirement for all of us, it was never really on the radar.”
Now that’s changed. Cohen’s agency has started teaching sold-out classes on beekeeping, food preservation, and chickens.
If greens aren’t your bag, why not try city livestock?
You may have heard a New Yorker writer on On Point yesterday talking about a move out of Manhattan and into a more agrarian lifestyle. E.B. White Susan Orlean penned an essay about raising chickens for the latest issue of the magazine. You can listen to her talk about it here. Urban chicken farming is catching on; Canadians were talking about it on public radio two years ago. It was on the CBC’s Spark that I first heard about the Eglu urban chicken coop and rabbit hutch. Maybe I’ll start raising a flock in the Highlands.
Here’s what we reported on today:
We’re back with a post about bees.
My colleague Brad Yost sent me a link to a Yale student’s environmentally-conscious music video. Armed only with a Mac, 808 emulator and 20 or so extras in bee costumes Max Lanman made this video:
Lanman’s brother Connor wrote the book Plight of the Bee, which likely led to Hagen-Das ice cream’s pro-bee efforts.
While city leaders sometimes like to compare Derby City to Portland, Oregon, there are times when it seems like Stumptown dwellers have us beat on social awareness.
The Mediavore points us to this urban foraging site where Rose City residents can search for fruit trees or other sources for do-it-yourself, hyperlocal nourishment.
Does anyone know of something like this in Louisville?
This is our last bee post for a while. In previous posts, we’ve brought you information about how you can raise bees almost anywhere. The benefits are clear, free honey and helping fight the mysterious colony collapse disorder, which is costing the world thousands of bees.
We didn’t plan on having so many posts about bees, but once we found one link, the rest kept on coming. This final site is also the most local, and it’s something we wish we’d have found sooner. The Northern Kentucky Beekeeper features insights on beekeeping in the commonwealth and offers a podcast for amateur apiarists.
Does anyone know the Northern Ky Beekeeper?
If you enjoyed our last two posts about urban bees, you may be interested in this information Elizabeth sent me. Olmstead Parks is holding a bee-related event tonight:
Wednesday, August 19 6:00 to 8:00pm
Walk in the Park Event: Pollinator Pursuit in Cherokee Park
Seek out some beneficial bugs and learn some fun facts. Meet in gravel lot on right before the Alexander Bridge. Easy to moderate hike. Donations appreciated.
We wrote about urban beekeeping yesterday, and today BoingBoing featured this video of a beekeeper tending to his flock in LA. Check it out and get your rooftop hive ready.
