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CONTENTS Food & Garden 4 • Sustainability 15 • Business 23 • Health & Wellness 31 2 September 23, 2010

Welcome to the Fall 2010 edition of Boulderganic!

ven though the temperature is slowly dropping, gardens are starting to lose their flourish and farmers’ markets are beginning to wind down, the spirit of growth and bounty is in full bloom here at Boulder Weekly. If you look back at last year’s fall issue, you’ll notice some big changes, like a whole new section: Health & Wellness. Living a truly sustainable

life is about more than recycling and reusing your shopping bags. It’s also about knowing what you’re putting in your body (and what you shouldn’t), understanding that beauty starts from the inside and discovering natural alternatives to conventional medicine, to name just a few. In other words, living green is a complete lifestyle. That’s why Boulderganic is branching out and exploring the thousands of ways

our community lives sustainably year-round, from enjoying local food to developing new, environmentally friendly products. So enjoy our new Health & Wellness section, as well as our original three — Food & Garden, Sustainability and Local Business — and learn how you can make your life green, healthy and sustainable. And as always, feel free to drop us a line at info@boulderganic.com.

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Eating with the seasons by Clayton Moore

Clayton Moore

o everything there is a season, carotene, like pumpkin, kale and squash. says the comforting prayer that “We’re at the most amazing time of inspired everyone from King year right now,” says Van Raes. “After all Solomon to The Byrds. But in the tending to the gardens, we experithe dizzying modern age of ence this incredible fruitfulness. Food is consumer marketing and industrial effiat its most exciting in late summer and ciency, it’s easy for that deep-rooted early fall because there are so many lesson to get lost. What really are the more choices.” benefits of seasonal eating, and how can Winter is the time for warming we get back to the cyclical diet that foods, conservation and the inwardour bodies need? looking hibernation that most living First of all, everyone from farmers things go through in the colder months. to nutritionists suggest that you stay That craving for soup you have in the as close to the source as possible, for deep winter? It’s your body craving difeverybody’s sake. Eating locally pours ferent kinds of protein, not to mention money back into Boulder’s economy, hearty root vegetables like carrots, SEASONAL EATING supports outlets for fresh food like potatoes, onions and garlic. Root Vegetables the Boulder Farmers’ Market, and “As we move deeper into the winAs fall and winter descend on Colorado, seasonal eaters turn to foods like root vegetables that gives you food from local farmers, ter months, we have to eat things that require longer cooking times, but provide muchmeaning that you can trust the source keep longer,” explains Van Raes. “I find needed warmth in cold climes. of your food. these foods to be very grounding, “When you’re eating seasonally, because all their energy is downward, your food is obviously going to be into the Earth.” fresher,” says Sue Van Raes, a nutritional therapist Another factor is that all produce, regardless an opportunity to discover what’s going on whose company, Boulder Nutrition, focuses on of its source, is at its peak nutritional value when around you on a much deeper level.” core metabolism as the basis for good health. “I it is ripe. Fruits and vegetables that travel long She and others have pointed out that have to say that I also point people in the direcdistances to get from harvest to table lose a little Chinese medicine is particularly insightful about tion of local seasonal eating. When you’re eating of their nutritional value every day they’re past these benefits. The ancient discipline recomtheir harvest. seasonally, you’re able to eat more locally. This mends foods that nourish the lungs in the fall, However, nutritionists also point out that eatputs less impact on the environment with your such as steamed pears. In the spring, people ing seasonal, local foods that help attune our food miles.” should eat foods that detoxify the liver after the So besides helping the environment, how does long winter, such as seasonal greens. In summer, bodies to nature is a choice that people have to eating seasonally benefit us as human beings? make every time they consume a meal. lighter foods should be our fare, like strawber“You just can’t expect results from a proExperts say that the right kinds of food, dependries, corn and broccoli. cessed-food diet,” says Van Raes. “When you’re ing on the time of year, can naturally protect peoAs we move into fall and winter, the most not really connected to the seasons, you’re layers ple from the effects of the changing seasons. dynamic changes occur in seasonal menus. The “When you’re eating with the seasons, the changes in growing conditions mean that changing away from intuitively choosing the right foods. It’s called metabolic programming. If you’re eating food you eat is not only inherently adapted to what and how we eat is essential for balancing French fries every day, you’re not going to crave that time of year, but on another level, the food the Earth’s resources. The autumn harvest is at you eat is attuning your body to the season something you’ve never eaten before. You create hand, with more colors and rituals and different itself,” says Van Raes. “If you stick to what’s in sea- components in the food than at any other time the food you eat. I really do believe that the son, you’ll come out more balanced with the of year. This time of year also introduces warming energy of our food helps us with our own cycles.” rhythms of nature. Not only will your food be spices like ginger and peppercorns, while the harRespond: info@boulderganic.com fresher and more potent, but you definitely have vest yields immunity-building foods rich in beta

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Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

Eat your veggies – and so much more by Elizabeth Miller

Elizabeth Miller

eading about raw foods could be enough to inspire you to purchase a juicer — not to give up on bacon cheeseburgers and chicken noodle soup forever. Just to start adding more juiced vegetables and fruits to your daily diet, or more salads, or other raw vegetables — because the idea of having more energy and spending less time in the kitchen sounds pretty good. Then your weekly garbage shrinks as you stop buying as many foods sold in packaging to detail their ingredients. You shed a few pounds. Then, perhaps, you invest in a dehydrator so you can start preparing your own raw ravioli or pad thai, or a good blender so you can process your own almond milk or cacao to make raw chocolate mousse. And then you’ve got to start attending rawlucks, the raw food versions of potlucks, so you can taste-test raw brownies, raw spaghetti and raw bacon — made from coconut meat, of course. Raw foodists say sometimes the move to raw foods starts by just looking into the options for a healthy lifestyle or investigating someone else’s choices. Brigitte Mars, a Boulderbased herbalist, raw foods chef and author of Rawsome!, started looking into raw foods when her daughter switched to a raw diet. Then she decided maybe she needed to try it. Joseph Fleming, one of the organizers of the raw foods group on Meetup.com, started switching to a raw diet 10 years ago as part of a move toward a healthier diet. “I really damaged my health back in college just from living on sugar and caffeine,” he says. By the time he was 25, he says, he could barely walk. He had joint damage that doctors said would have him on painkillers indefinitely. “It was just kind of a wake-up call to take responsibility for the rest of my life,” he says. “I knew what health food was, I knew what junk food was, and I started to look around to see what to do to change my diet.” He went on to run a Marine Corps marathon. Heating foods breaks down the enzymes, Mars says, and those enzymes are what help people fight many inflammatory ailments (often ending in “itis” like arthritis and bursitis). Even if you’re not battling those ailments, she says, there are immediate benefits to reap. Raw food tastes better — Mars pointed to the salt and

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Boulderganic Fall ’10

Raw chocolate mouse, strawberry chocolate cheesecake and other raw desserts from Tonic.

seasonings added to cooked vegetables and fruits that can often be spared when those foods are raw. A handful of spinach that would cook down to a small serving can instead pile into an entréesized salad when raw and still hanging on to all its water content. Mars also says that her energy level has soared, and that she looks and feels better now than she did 20 years ago. She’s also making a sustainable choice. She does most of her shopping in organic produce sections, and she rarely purchases items that have an ingredients list or preparation directions. “You don’t need all that on a tomato,” she says. “You know what you’re going to do with a tomato.” But then again, maybe not. Because you might not know what to do to make a tomato more than just a tomato. Raw chefs can make a tomato into a portion of a tomato soup, pureed in a blender and served at room temperature. Or add it to raw pad thai, noodles dehydrated instead of baked, and the whole dish heated — to less than 114 degrees — in the dehydrator. Even meals like raw lasagna or ravioli can be prepared in about 10 minutes, Mars says, though she may need to plan in advance to sprout nuts, seeds or quinoa. She has uploaded a video on

YouTube.com called “Seven Minutes to Raw” to show new raw food “cooks” how to make a few items. “Cooking” without cooking, she says, means pureeing, blending, marinating, fermenting, dehydrating or sprouting foods. Of course, buying organic produce and nuts, and then getting all the kitchen gadgets needed to turn it into raw meals, could get a little expensive. If you’re looking for someone to split a dehydrator with — and perhaps explore raw recipes like the one for raw macadamia nut blueberry cheesecake — you can join local raw foodists who get together for rawlucks twice a month. Both a Yahoo.com group and a Meetup.com group gather in Boulder. Fleming says what he eats at home is pretty simple: a lot of salads or things he can throw in the blender. He’ll prepare something bigger if he’s going to one of the rawlucks. And if he’s going out to eat, it’s to the Tonic Herban Lounge or Leaf, where the menus include raw food options. Establishing a healthy raw food diet requires a little self-teaching, Fleming says, and he suggess reading books and talking to other people in the raw food community. “Just take it as it comes, because it’s a big shift in the sense of letting go of a lot of attachments and addictions, and that just kind of happens naturally,” he says. “When I started shifting over I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll never be able to give up milk. I’ve got to have my bread. I’ve got to have this.’ For a while I was trying to fight it, I’ve got to adhere to this rule or something. It wasn’t until I just let go of that and said, ‘OK, this where I’m at. I still like my sandwich now and then,’ and after a while bread fell away. I didn’t need that.” “A lot of raw foodists are not 100 percent raw,” says Mars, who estimates she eats about 90 percent raw now. “There’s no raw police. It’s really a person’s decision.” For those raw foodists who still want a taste of the holidays, Mars will be teaching a workshop on Nov. 13 on how to make raw holiday dishes, including mushroom stuffing and pumpkin pie. Details are at www.brigittemars.com. For tips on creating a successful raw food diet, visit boulderganic.com Respond: info@boulderganic.com September 23, 2010 5

Favorite recipes for local fall produce by Clay Fong

ust because the temperature has Drazsnzak, Colterra’s executive chef, says he dropped and sunny summer memospotlights ingredients from such purveyors as ries are quickly fading, that doesn’t Oxford Gardens, a favorite of both local eatnecessarily mean that enjoying fresh eries and Farmers’ Market patrons, and local produce has come to an end. Rocky Mountain Pumpkin Ranch. Drazsnzak While such warm-weather bounty as juicy offers up his recipe for rustic apple pie using Western Slope peaches and delicate greens fruit from Longmont’s Blacksmith Ridge farm. become scarce, fall favorites such as hearty Blacksmith is an organic-certified operation squash and cooking greens create ample that also offers community-supported agriculCaley Kurchinski opportunities for the home chef to enjoy the autumnal harvest. If time concerns make it difficult to hit the Farmers’ Market, Door to Door Organics (www.doortodoor organics.com) is a local enterprise providing home delivery of organic produce year-round out of its Lafayette warehouse. During the summer, Door to Door offers boxes composed exclusively of Colorado-grown fruits and vegetables. One of this operation’s favored local suppliers is Longmont’s Full Circle Farms. Under the leadership of Dave Asbury, Full Circle raises more than 100 varieties of organic produce, including squash, A seasonal preparation cucumber, bell pepper and by Colterra in Niwot zucchini. Responsible agricultural practices are the norm here, and include using runoff water in drip irrigation systems, crop rotation ture shares. For the butter, he suggests that and using local supplies to reduce fuel costs of Horizon Organic Dairy, a large but local as much as possible. Ideally prepared with Full operation. Circle’s butternut squash, the recipe below is an unusual take on the classic pancake, with Organic Butternut Squash this fall vegetable as the star attraction. Pancakes (Serves 6) While Niwot’s Colterra restaurant showAdapted from OrganicAuthority.com cases the flavors of southern France and 1 small organic butternut squash northern Italy, the philosophy of owner and 1 organic egg Chef Bradford Heap gives equal weight to the 1 organic egg white use of seasonal and local ingredients. Michael 1/2 cup of organic milk

6 September 23, 2010

2 cups organic whole wheat pastry flour 2 teaspoons of baking powder 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves 1/4 teaspoon vanilla 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 1. Preheat oven to 350º F. 2. Cut squash in half, and remove seeds with a spoon. Bake squash in a roasting pan until tender, about 40 minutes. Twenty minutes into baking the squash, add one cup of water to the roasting pan (this will keep the squash from drying out). 3. Scoop out squash with a spoon and cool. Mash squash with a fork. 4. In a bowl, combine the wet ingredients: squash, eggs and milk. 5. In another bowl combine the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, cinnamon and cloves. 6. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well. Let stand 20 minutes. 7. Heat the oil to medium high heat in a nonstick pan. 8. Pour or ladle batter into the pan and cook 3 minutes per side. 9. Serve with whipped cream, yogurt, honey, maple syrup or butter. Rustic Apple Pie Yield: One 9-inch pie Crust: 3 cups flour 1 tbsp.sugar 1 tsp. salt 12 oz. butter, chilled, cubed 2/3 cup cold water Filling:

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1 pound apples 4 tbsp. sugar, divided 1 tbsp. cornstarch 1 tsp. salt 2 tsp. cinnamon 1 tsp. nutmeg 1 lemon, juiced and zested 1. For the crust, in a food processor combine flour, 3 tbsp. sugar and salt. Add butter and pulse until butter pieces are pea-sized. 2. While processor is running, slowly stream in cold water. Stop when dough starts to come together. Note: It is better that the dough is too wet than too dry. 3. Collect the dough together, wrap and chill at least one hour. 4. For the filling, peel the apples, then quarter them, remove the seeds and cut each quarter into three pieces. 5. Toss remaining ingredients

together with the apples. 6. Roll the dough out to form a large circle. You want the dough to be larger than the pie will eventually be. 7. Place the apple filling in the center and using an egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with 2 tbsp. water or milk), fold the sides of the crust up and over the filling, about 1 inch, all the way around. Do this by overlapping the dough as you work around and using the egg wash to help the dough stick to itself. 8. Carefully transfer to a baking sheet, and brush the exposed crust with the egg wash and sprinkle with remaining 1 tbsp. sugar. 9. Bake at 375Â° F for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown, checking the oven after 30 minutes. Respond: info@boulderganic. com

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September 23, 2010 7

Closed for the season Prepare your garden for the winter by Oakland L. Childers

Caley Kurchinski

s long summer days yield to early fall evenings and sweater weather replaces sweltering sunshine, gardening season is wrapping up for 2010. But just because you’ve pulled the last batch of homegrown tomatoes from their vines and canned or jarred the remnants of a fruitful summer doesn’t mean your work is done. Not quite. The first snows of winter usually fall on or around Halloween in Boulder, so between now and then getting the garden ready for winter should be a green thumb’s top priority. Out in North Boulder sits Harlequin’s Gardens, a great source of vegetable and flower garden plants, as well as one of the premier sources of information on organic gardening in Boulder. Natalie Shrewsbury, a plant specialist with Harlequin’s, says mid-September through October is prime winterizing season for both vegetable patches and flower gardens. One process, she says, begins with soil preparation. “You’ll want to start by pulling out annuals and planting a cover crop,” Shrewsbury says. “People use rye, buckwheat or clover.” Shrewsbury says to be sure you are planting annual rye grass, and to avoid soil prep altogether if your garden is full of native plants. They are used to the dense, dry soils of the area and won’t have any problems getting nutrients through the long winter months. The cover crops will start to grow quickly, Shrewsbury says, then go dormant for the winter. When spring comes the warm temperatures will spur them to grow more. After they’ve served their purpose — they help prevent erosion, control weeds, aerate the soil and return nitrogen to the soil — the cover crop can be dug into the ground or simply cut off at ground level, leaving the roots in place. For vegetable gardens, a nitrogen-fixing cover crop is more important, according to Shrewsbury. Vetch and clover are two plants that generate lots of nitrogen while opening up compacted soils and creating better moisture in the soil for your vegetables to suck up come summer. Another method of preparing your garden for winter is called sheet mulching or, as it is often known among green thumbs, “lasagna gardening.” 8 September 23, 2010

Mikl Brawner, Harlequin’s Gardens

The process involves nothing more than covering your garden in layers of mulch and straw. “Basically, you’re building soil for the spring time,” Shrewsbury says. Start by removing any sick or diseased plants from the garden. That’s not the sort of thing you want getting a foothold in your soil, says Deb Svoboda, a master gardener at Harlequin’s. “Look for any wilting, browning or blotches on the leaves,” Svoboda says. In a vegetable garden this is extra important, she says. “In particular tomatoes,” Svoboda says. “I would pull everything out, because most tomato diseases are soil-born. Svoboda says a disease issue is also a good reason to switch things up in your garden. “Don’t put tomatoes back in there next year,” Svoboda says. “What affects a tomato won’t affect a pepper.” After you’ve cleared what needs to be removed, use old leaves and compost to create a nice layer up to two inches thick on your soil. Then cover the whole thing with straw. This protects the ground and, over time, gives the soil a moist nutrient mixture. Last, make sure to water. Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean your garden can just be left alone. Shrewsbury says to water whenever it’s really dry (that’s a lot in this arid climate), typically in January. But depending on the precipitation from year to year, you may need to water more

often. Keeping the garden moist helps the natural processes taking place under your blankets of compost and straw. The layers trap the water and keep the soil relatively warm, forming a sort of natural greenhouse for soil enrichment. Things work a little differently for a perennial flowerbed (one with flowers that return every year without replanting). “In a perennial bed, save the cleanup until spring,” Svoboda says. “One, it gives you some winter interest. Two, it protects the crown of the plants from frost and freezing.” Svoboda says if the area around your perennials freezes and thaws, the upheaval in the soil can pop plants right out of the ground — not exactly the best thing for regenerative growth in the spring. In the fall, she says, do some broadcast fertilizing with a granular, organic product, and then put about a half-inch of compost over the entire area, leaving leaves until spring cleanup. “So the first thing in the spring there’s some yummy snacks for the plants to eat,” Svoboda says. Mikl Brawner, co-owner of Harlequin’s (along with his wife, Eve) says there are several approaches to winterizing, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. “If one of your interests is to take care of wildlife, then you want to leave your seed heads on the plants so they can eat it,” Brawner says. “If your priority is to have everything looking spiffy, cut all the seed heads off. If you want to save the plants’ energy and want to share seeds with critters, you can cut off half the seed heads for the birds and also reseed.” In most cases, Brawner says, fertilizing is the first step in any winterization program. “The first thing I think of is fertilizing,” he says. “A lot of people believe the fall is the best time to fertilize because it’s when plants are taking starches and sugars down into their roots.” Brawner says fertilizing before cold weather arrives helps strengthen the plants for winter because most don’t have leaves to generate chlorophyll. “They need energy to survive that dormant period,” he says. “In Colorado we have such errat-

Boulderganic Fall/Winter ’10 Boulder Weekly

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Logical ic springs. It’s common for plants to put out leaves in spring, then we have a cold snap, it kills leaves, then the plant has to put out another set of leaves. That takes a lot of energy.” Here organic gardening has a distinct advantage over what has become the norm: chemical treatment. “With organic fertilizer you can fertilize late in the season without having to worry about over-stimulating growth,” Brawner says. Using a chemical fertilizer in August and September is likely to cause lots of new growth, Brawner says. It’s a bad time to spur a garden into production mode. “You get lots of new growth, then you get a cold snap, [and all that new growth] is gone,” says Brawner. “You just wasted all that energy. Sometimes it will kill a plant because it’s in active growth while going dormant. If you wait until September to do fall fertilizing with organic material, you will stimulate very little growth.” Brawner says he has been using this technique for 10 years on the rose garden at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse — fertilizing with organics first in May when plants are preparing to explode with growth, then again in September when they are preparing to go dormant for the winter. The method was at first questioned by other rose growers for its unconventional approach, according to Brawner, but has proved to be a winner as evidenced by the beauty and density of the garden. Shrewsbury, Brawner and Svoboda agree covering your garden or even portions of it is usually not a good idea. Plants that might need such extreme measures to survive, they say, are probably not a good fit for Colorado and should be avoided. Top dressing with compost, they say, is the

Boulder Weekly

best option. “Sometimes [the compost is] too hard to work into the soil because the plants are so close together,” says Brawner. “Top dressing also attracts earth worms to come up and get it and take it back into the ground.” The worms’ comings and goings aerate the soil, letting nutrients and moisture seep in while carrying other soil-building organic material deep into the bed. “It’s good to do that each year because our soils are so naturally low in organic matter,” says Brawner. Planting in the fall in preparation for the following spring is also a good idea with some plants, Brawner says. Because the winter months shift the focus of plant growth from the flowers to roots, planting in fall gives plants a great opportunity to build a solid foundation. “Plant things you didn’t have time to plant last spring,” he says. “They will be much stronger in the coming spring.” With the addition of a cold frame, leafy vegetables can be planted in September and October, giving you large yield of greens in March, while the plants in your regular garden are still dormant. Fall is also a good time to prepare lawns as well, according to Brawner, but only for cool-season grasses like Kentucky bluegrass and fescue — typical lawn grasses. Along with seeding, the lawn should be fertilized and treated for weeds, again avoiding chemicals as much as possible. An alfalfa fertilizer is the best organic solution, combined with aerating and the feeding and seeding process. “The alternative to weed and feed is corn gluten,” Brawner says. “Put it on in February and September and it keeps the weed seeds from emerging.” Respond:info@boulderganic.com

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Build your own indoor garden

Hydroponics makes it happen story and photos by David Accomazzo

Figure A: one side of the PVC frame

Figure B: the top of the PVC frame

Figure C: three-way PVC connector with adapter

n unreasonably perfect mountain summer is coming to a close here in Boulder, and with it, the gardening season. But while the weather might not cooperate with your green thumb, there’s no reason to ditch the garden for snowboard boots quite yet. With a little elbow grease and some minimal investment of time and money, you can build a self-contained, vibrant indoor garden that you can put anywhere in your house. How, you ask? With the magic of hydroponics. The term “hydroponic” describes a method of growing plants in water, not soil. With just a plastic tub, an aquarium pump, some fluorescent lights, some PVC and a few other odds and ends, you can grow fresh vegetables virtually anywhere in your home. Eric Finnegan, co-owner of Family Hydroponics on 2125 32nd St. in Boulder,

helped design such a garden for this story. All of the growing equipment can be found in his shop. Call the store at 303-996-6100 for more information. The apparatus uses a hydroponic technique called deep water culture (DWC). In DWC, plants grow their roots into a reservoir of water that is filled with a fertilized nutrient solution. A pump pushes oxygen into the water so the plant roots don’t drown. By skipping the soil, the plants are able to access nutrients directly, which promotes surprisingly rapid growth. And since the lights are built into the system, you can put it anywhere in your home with good air circulation. Ready to build? Here’s what you’ll need:

Eight 2-foot PVC pipes, 1/2-inch diameter Four three-way PVC fixtures Two 2-foot Hydrofarm T5 flourescent grow lights Four 15-inch pieces of chain

Figure D: chain linking to bracket

Figure E: chain looping around PVC frame

10 September 23, 2010

PVC Frame Eight 1/2-inch PVC elbows Four 1/2-inch threaded PVC adapters

Everything else One 28-gallon tub with lid Six net pots, 2 inches in diameter One small aquarium pump 8 to 12 inches of tubing to connect to the pump (ask for help at the hydroponic store) One small aquarium stone One power strip (two-pronged connector) One light timer (two-pronged connector, optional) Duct tape Hydroponic fertilizer see INDOORS Page 12

Figure F: pump with tube fed through the net pots (air stone not pictured)

Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

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Figure G: completed frame and tub, sans wires

INDOORS from Page 10

Hydroton clay pebbles Peat pellets for germinating seeds Let’s build the PVC frame. The frame consists of two sides and a top. The sides are made from two 2-foot PVC pipes and a shorter PVC pipe at the bottom. When finished, the sides will look like the top part of a football goalpost. To make the sides: 1) Cut one of the PVC pipes in half, making two 12-inch pipes. 2) Attach two elbows to each end of one of the 12-inch pipes. 3) Attach a 2-foot pipe to the other end of the elbows. 4) Repeat steps 2 and 3. You should have two goalpost-type structures (See Figure A) Now let’s make the top: 1) Cut one of the 2-foot PVC pipes in half, making two 12-inch pipes. 2) Cut 3 inches off each of the 12-inch pipes, and discard the smaller pieces. You should have two 9-inch pieces of PVC. 3) Take the four three-way fixtures and attach one of the threaded adapters to the threaded side of each piece. (See Figure C) 4) Attach a 9-inch PVC pipe to the adapted side of each of

the three-way fixtures. You’ll have two 9-inch pieces of PVC with these two-part fixtures on each end. 5) Connect the two shorter pipes with two 2-foot PVC pipes. (See Figure B) 6) Attach the lights. The brand of lights I used came with brackets and screws to attach to a wall. Discard the screws, but attach the brackets — there should be two for each light. 7) Using a pair of pliers, stretch out a piece of chain and attach it to the bracket (see Figure D). Stretch out the other end of the chain in a similar way, and loop each piece of chain around the top of the tube (see Figure E). This design allows you to easily move the lights out of the way if your plants start getting big. The two sides detach from the top with relative ease for easy portability. Each fluorescent light uses 24 watts of electricity, and the pump uses 3 watts. That’s only 51 watts, which is less than most incandescent light bulbs. But there is still a slight danger of electrocution, as is the case whenever you mix electricity and water, so be careful. Plug the lights into the power strip and plug the strip into the timer. Set the timer for 18 hours on,

Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

six hours off. You can skip the timer if you’d like, and unless your plants are going to flower, they won’t suffer. But if your plants are going to bear fruit or flower, a timer is necessary. Ask at the hydro store for more information. Whatever you do, don’t plug the pump into the timer. The pump needs to run all day, every day — no exceptions. Now, let’s make the tub. The most important thing to notice is that you need to duct-tape the entire tub so that no light gets into the water and roots. Plant roots haven’t evolved to grow in light; any light seeping into the reservoir will suck the life out of your plants. I have skipped this step for purposes of demonstration, but make absolutely sure you don’t. 1) Flip a net pot upside down and trace the lip, making six circles on the lid that are equally spaced. Use a ruler if you have to, but the measurements don’t need to be exact. 2) Now take a tape measure or ruler and make several markings 1/4 of an inch inside the circle you just drew. Connect the dots into a circle, leaving two concentric circles. 3) Using a box cutter or other implement, cut out the smaller circle. The net pots should fit in the holes perfectly. 3) Fill each net pot about halfway with hydroton. 5) Attach the tube to the aquarium pump and run the tube through the hydroton and the side of one of the net pots into the tub. Attach the air stone to the end of the pump (see Figure F). 6) Now, prepare the peat pellets according to the directions on the package. Add whatever seeds you’d like. (This particular design can accommodate some pretty large plants — I’m going to grow lettuce in mine.) Once the seeds germinate, turn on the lights. 7) Fill water level to the bottom edge of the net pots. Now that the garden is complete, you need to know how to take care of the plants. The hydroponic solutions usually come in multi-part formulas, so follow the instructions carefully. When the plants are germinating, use plain water only. One note about water: Chlorine Boulder Weekly

that comes in tap water is bad for plants in hydroponic systems; use either filtered water or water that has sat out in the open air for 24 hours. When the plants are small, use 1/4 of the recommended solution strength to water them. The instructions, depending on the brand, usually give proportions meant to be

mixed in 1-gallon amounts, so keep an old milk jug handy and mix the fertilizers in there. As the plants get bigger, gradually use more and more of the nutrient solution until you reach full strength. It’s a good idea to replace the nutrient solution in the tub every two weeks or so. This can be trickier than it sounds, so make sure you

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September 23, 2010 13

Fall & Winter Calendar A listing of sustainability events

Susan France

Various locations in Denver, denverfairfood.blogspot.com/2010/07/no-coastencuentro.html. Through Oct. 16.

Thursday, Sept. 23 Lafayette Farmers’ Market. 4-8 p.m. Festival Plaza, Public Road and Chester Street, Lafayette, 303-665-5588. Transitioning to Natural Lawn Care. Center for Resource Conservation, 2639 Spruce St., Boulder, ecologicallawncare.com. Friday, Sept. 24 8th Annual Wilderness Therapy Symposium — Presented by Naropa University. Millennium Harvest House, 1345 28th St., Boulder, 303-443-3850. Through Sept. 26. Longmont Shredding Event — Shred your sensitive documents safely and efficiently. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. 140 Martin St., Longmont, 303-772-7300. Saturday, Sept. 25 Boulder Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 13th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard, Boulder, 303-910-2236. Broomfield Prescription Drug Takeback. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 3001 W. 124th Ave, Broomfield, 303-438-6329. Longmont Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Boulder County Fairgrounds, 9595 Nelson Rd., Longmont, 303-910-2236. Louisville Farmers’ Market. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Steinbaugh Pavilion, 824 Front St., Boulder, 303-902-2451. Tool Drive for ReSource Yard — Donate your unwanted tools. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ReSource Yard, 6400 Arapahoe Rd., Boulder, 303-501-5314. Sunday, Sept. 26 Boulder County Solar & Green Homes Tour. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Various locations, www.conservationcenter.org/energy/tour.html. Denver Area Solar & Green Homes Tour — Various locations in Denver. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. www.conservationcenter.org/energy/tour.html. Tool Drive for ReSource Yard — Donate your unwanted tools. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. ReSource Yard, 6400 Arapahoe Rd., Boulder, 303-501-5314. Wednesday, Sept. 29 Boulder Farmers’ Market. 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. 13th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard, Boulder, 303-910-2236. Friday, Oct. 1 Thorne Ecological Institute’s 4th 14 September 23, 2010

Liz Kois, co-owner of Abbey Farm in Boulder. Visit their website at www.abbey farm.org.

Annual Natural Night Out Fundraiser. 5:30 p.m. Rembrandt Yard, 1301 Spruce St., Boulder, 303-301-2970. Saturday, Oct. 2 Boulder Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 13th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard, Boulder, 303-910-2236. Longmont Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Boulder County Fairgrounds, 9595 Nelson Rd., Longmont, 303-910-2236. Louisville Farmers’ Market. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Steinbaugh Pavilion, 824 Front St., Boulder, 303-902-2451. Tool Drive for ReSource Yard — Donate your unwanted tools. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ReSource Yard, 6400 Arapahoe Rd., Boulder, 303-501-5314. Sunday, Oct. 3 Tool Drive for ReSource Yard — Donate your unwanted tools. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. ReSource Yard, 6400 Arapahoe Rd., Boulder, 303-501-5314. Tuesday, Oct. 5 Community Matters Conference. 8 a.m. Denver Grand Hyatt, 1750 Welton St., Denver, www. communitymatters.org.Through Oct. 8. Water for People. 6 p.m. Wynkoop Brewery, 1634 18th St., Denver, /www. sustainabilityseries.org. Wednesday, Oct. 6 BGBG Commercial Brown Bag Series — City and county of Boulder program updates. 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. REI, 1789 28th St., Boulder, bgbg.org. Boulder Farmers’ Market. 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. 13th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard, Boulder, 303-910-2236.

Friday, Oct. 8 Center for Native Ecosystems’ Mile High Bash. 5:30 p.m. Invesco Field, Denver, 303-546-0214. Saturday, Oct. 9 Boulder Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 13th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard, Boulder, 303-910-2236. Farm Dinner Fundraiser for Flatirons Neighborhood Farm. 5 p.m. 709 University Ave., Boulder, 720438-9246. Longmont Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Boulder County Fairgrounds, 9595 Nelson Rd., Longmont, 303-910-2236. Louisville Farmers’ Market. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Steinbaugh Pavilion, 824 Front St., Boulder, 303-902-2451. Sunday, Oct. 10 Global Work Party. 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Various locations, Boulder, www. Boulder350.org. Tuesday, Oct. 12 BGBG Commercial Brown Bag Series — Deconstruction Practices for Residential Buildings. 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. REI, 1789 28th St., Boulder, bgbg.org. Wednesday, Oct. 13 Climate Change Impacts in Indian Country: Adapting ‘Adaptation’ for Native American Tribes. 4 p.m. CIRES Auditorium, CU campus, Boulder, envs. colorado.edu. Friday, Oct. 15 Student Farmworker Alliance Presents: No Coast Encuentro.

Saturday, Oct. 16 Boulder Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 13th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard, Boulder, 303-910-2236. Longmont Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Boulder County Fairgrounds, 9595 Nelson Rd., Longmont, 303-910-2236. Louisville Farmers’ Market. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Steinbaugh Pavilion, 824 Front St., Boulder, 303-902-2451. Monday, Oct. 18 Feed the Future Financial Aid Fundraising Event. 6:30 p.m. Restaurant 4580, 4580 Broadway, Boulder, 303-448-1500. Tuesday, Oct. 19 Clean Energy Day. 11 a.m to 4 p.m. UMC Fountains and Aspen Rooms, CU campus, Boulder, ecenter.colorado.edu. Saturday, Oct. 23 Boulder Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 13th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard, Boulder, 303-910-2236. WILD Foundation Fall Gala. 5:30 p.m. The Sculptured House, 24501 Ski Hill Dr., Golden, www.wild.org. Longmont Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Boulder County Fairgrounds, 9595 Nelson Rd., Longmont, 303-910-2236. Saturday, Oct. 30 Boulder Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 13th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard, Boulder, 303-910-2236. Longmont Farmers’ Market. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Boulder County Fairgrounds, 9595 Nelson Rd., Longmont, 303-910-2236. Wednesday, Nov. 3 BGBG Commercial Brown Bag Series — Topic to be announced. 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. REI, 1789 28th St., Boulder, bgbg.org. Saturday, Nov. 20 Longmont Shredding Event — Shred your sensitive documents safely. and efficiently 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. 140 Martin St., Longmont, 303-772-7300.

Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

Reskilling for fun and profit Some get back to pioneer skills for pleasure, some for preparation by Quibian Salazar-Moreno

Courtesy Barbara Day

n the corporate world, the term “reskilling” refers to training employees to learn new skills or improve current skills. But for some Boulder County residents, the term refers to re-learning the skills of our ancestors and putting them to use today to live a healthier lifestyle and strengthen the community. One set of skills is working with fibers: spinning, knitting, weaving and other crafts. Barbara Day, owner of Gypsy Wools in downtown Boulder, has mastered pretty much all of them. An accomplished spinner, Day has worked with everything from typical sheep wool to more unusual fibers, such as those of bison and alpaca. Her shop on Spruce Street is full of yarns that she has either spun herself or purchased from other spinners and then dyed brilliant colors. Though few people would likely have the patience to take a pile of raw wool and, through hours of work, turn it into a pair of socks, Day says one of the joys of handcrafts is precisely how slow and involved they are. While Day enjoys working with fibers mostly for pleasure, some local residents have taken traditional skills further, making them part of a pragmatic change in lifestyle. In 2008 Transition Colorado started hosting The Great Reskilling, a collection of workshops that ranged from your basic gardening skills and making herbal medicines to chicken farming and permaculture. The bi-weekly event became so popular that other organizations and reskilling experts started hosting their own workshops. Now Transition Colorado just allows locals to post information on upcoming reskilling workshops on their social networking site, http://transitioncolorado.ning. com. “Chicken-raising is hot,” Transition Colorado Executive Director Lynette Marie Hanthorn says of the popular workshops. “Learning how to garden has been the most popular, along with herbal medicine gardening. We’ve also put on classes on how to grow mushrooms in your yard — not only to add them to your diet, but they’re great Boulder Weekly

Boulderganic Fall ’10

for having mushroom inoculation in your lawn. It’s great for keeping the soil really fertile.” Another popular but controversial two-day workshop is rainwater harvesting. Run by rainwater harvesting expert Jason Gerhardt, the idea of rainwater harvesting raises eyebrows because certain techniques are illegal in Colorado. Due to water rights, restrictions and agricultural legalities on the Front Range, residents in the vicinity of running water and a sewer system are not allowed to capture and store rainwater from the roofs of buildings or homes. “That’s probably the biggest reason why this topic is getting a really big audience, because of the confusion about it,” Gerhardt says. “It’s very complicated. However, what I focus on is a technique called earthworks. So we’re not storing water in a tank to be distributed later. We’re just channeling it from downspouts and gutters and shaping the landscape to capture that water and direct it to where it’s needed most. And that’s entirely legal.” On the first day of the two-day workshop, Gerhardt goes over the history of rainwater harvesting and the techniques used in arid regions like Africa and the deserts of Arizona. He also goes over the legalities concerning harvesting in

Colorado, what’s legal, what isn’t legal and what the consequences would be for breaking the law. On the second day, Gerhardt focuses on building practical skills and getting in the dirt. “We’re out in the landscape digging swales or infiltration basins, directing water from down spouts throughout the landscape,” he says. “And we don’t use any pipes really, it’s all just shaping the landscape. I say we go from landscaping to landshaping.” The water then leads to a garden, fruitbearing trees or bushes or some other type of small agricultural project. Gerhardt says that since we live in a typically arid environment, rainwater harvesting has nothing but benefits. “We have a ton of water here; it’s just not falling all over the landscape,” he says. “It’s concentrated in the mountains. As our population grows, we put more and more pressure on our water system, our creeks, our groundwater, our reservoirs, on all of it. What we’re faced with is we can use what we have, falling from the sky, or we can continue to develop projects like the Windy Gap Project, and bring water from the Western Slope, at a very high expense, to the Front Range to water our landscapes, essentially. So this goes hand-in-hand with water conservation.” Gerhardt, who hosted a workshop in the spring, hopes to host another one in October to help folks prepare and build their skills for the next season. In the meantime, Transition Colorado will continue to promote and occasionally host workshops as part of The Great Reskilling series. “There are other groups in Boulder County that participate in this on some level, really drawing on the knowledge of the elderly in our community, people that have lived through tough times and have survived and done well and been able to share that knowledge with other people,” Hanthorn says. “To me, that’s part of the great reskilling, hearing those stories of surmounting difficult times.” Respond: info@boulderganic.com September 23, 2010 15

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Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

CU students’ chicken coop business brings farming to roost by Jefferson Dodge

courtesy of Eric Millinger

n effort that began as a class project in the University of Colorado at Boulder’s architecture and planning department has grown into a local company that is producing distinctive chicken coops for backyard farmers. And the company has big plans to sell other products that empower urban residents to produce their own food and become more self-sufficient. Last fall, when Jeff Troutman was a senior at CU, he decided to design a chicken coop as an independent study project. He says he was inspired by one of his architecture instructors, Rob Pyatt, who had raised chickens at home, as well as a veterinarian family friend who had done the same. The innovative, clean design of the coop he built was enough to land it in an exhibit at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art for a few months. At the time, fellow CU student Eric Millinger was creating a business plan for an Engineers Without Borders project to produce high-efficiency wood-burning stoves for residents of Rwanda. Troutman learned of that project and asked Millinger, an environmental engineering major, if he would help create a similar plan for turning the chicken coops into a business. Another CU architecture student, Dustin Buck, joined the effort as well, and “Local Food Solutions” was born just before Buck and Troutman graduated in May. Last spring, the trio placed their first prototype coop at the CU student-run Beyond Organics Farm in Boulder, got some feedback from the farmers, and made some design changes, like having two doors in the back of the coop instead of one. The top door is for accessing the roosting area to clean out chicken waste, while the bottom door leads to the nesting boxes, for easy egg retrieval. Troutman says he wanted to keep the roost separate from the nesting area, while

Boulder Weekly

Boulderganic Fall ’10

ness — manning a booth at the Boulder Creek Festival over the Memorial Day weekend. Millinger says they handed out about 500 pamphlets and had one of their coops on hand, which created a lot of interest. Millinger says surveys show that more and more people want fresh, healthy food from a place they know and trust — like their own backyard. And the recent national egg recall drives home that point. “The eggs you buy in the store are not the same as you get in your backyard,” Millinger says. “The idea is you’re not relying on this The Local Food Solutions chicken coop industrial farming practice for your food. Mass production takes away making the coop easy to clean (without havyour connection to your food.” ing to enter the coop) and maximizing space. He points out that locals who have garMillinger says the intent was to build dens in their yards can create a miniature something more attractive than your boxy, food cycle by adding chickens. According to run-of-the-mill coops. Millinger, chicken waste is “the best fertilizer “They’re not sexy, they’re not appealing,” you can get” for gardens, after it is composted he says of traditional coops. “The best ones for a couple of weeks. And he says even leftare just ‘not ugly.’” over garden scraps can be fed to the chickens, The Local Food Solutions coop features a which can improve the quality of the eggs. slanted roof with vertical slats at the top, to “It’s empowering,” he says of the eco-cirprovide ventilation. cle. “People like that. And you’re part of the “And we paint them ourselves, so we can system, because you eat the food.” do any color,” Millinger says. In addition to the chicken coops, the three The coops are also easy to put together, partners plan to design bee hives, rainwater the owners add. The panels are cut using a catchments, compost bins, garden beds and computer numerically controlled (CNC) rout- drip irrigation systems. er bit, with what Troutman calls “a robot arm” Boulder allows residents to keep chickens that is similar to one he used in a CU archiin their backyards, but there are varying regutecture lab. The CNC router relies on digital lations in the county’s cities and towns, so Millinger warns that you may need a permit. information in a computer file to make exact The coops run about $1,200, and an cuts in the plywood. Troutman says the system attached chicken pen costs an extra $100 to allows the company to produce the parts for $150. a coop in less than an hour. Troutman says 20 percent of the gross Each coop houses three nesting boxes, profits will be donated to nonprofits that enough room for four to six chickens, and exhibit similar urban farming values. each chicken lays about five eggs a week on Delivery within 50 miles of Boulder is free. average, Millinger says. Last spring, the trio won a $1,000 grant in For more information, check out www.coloradochickencoops.com. a social venture competition and used the Respond:info@boulderganic.com money to fund their opening weekend in busi-

September 23, 2010 17

Populus Design makes going green easier by Clayton Moore

Clayton Moore

t may not be easy going green, but a Boulder startup company is doing its best to make energy efficiency attractive to builders, homeowners and even cities. Populus Sustainable Design Consulting focuses on high-performance design consulting that hopefully leads to net-zero or near-net-zero designs for residential and multi-family projects. The company also helps guide architects and builders through the maze of green-building codes and green building certification programs like Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as well as advising cities like Boulder on the viability of their energy codes. Populus co-founders David Neiger and Laura Hutchings “The driving force was to make an impact on the environment by improving buildings in order to than design consulting. It’s about finding lessen their carbon footprint on the planways to bring a message that resonates et,” explains President Laura Hutchings, with the culture and brings about market who co-founded the company with her transformation.” husband, energy efficiency expert David The company’s projects have ranged Neiger. “We’ve found that cutting-edge from advising the City of Boulder on its energy efficiency is becoming more mainproposed SmartRegs ordinance to creating stream.” design solutions for the Logan/Wiggins resiBeyond high-level consulting, Populus dence in Boulder, a LEED Platium, beyondalso gets involved with clients who want to net-zero, carbon-neutral home designed by “future-proof” their homes against rising Jim Logan Architects. energy costs. While green building has become a hot “Being a part of that process is what we industry throughout Colorado, Populus love to do,” Hutchings says. “We always say Sustainable Design Consulting also focuses that we meet people where they are. Not on the bottom line. The professionals here every client wants to build a zero-energy use an improvement analysis worksheet house. They might just want an increase in that gives clients numerous options to efficiency, or maybe they just need help improve their design or offset environmenpicking out light bulbs. What we do is more tal impacts.

18 September 23, 2010

“One of the ways in which we’re different is our use of data,” Hutchings says. “We don’t push a specific ideology about what makes a house green. We take into account our clients’ goals. Sometimes they want the lowest first cost to make a home as efficient as possible, sometimes they want more. This tool helps them see the quantifiable impact of their decisions.” The company’s staff regularly assists local nonprofits, like its recent collaboration to provide LEED services and energy analysis to Flatirons Habitat for Humanity. “We want to do two things: help people, while we also help the planet,” she says. “The people part is about creating sustainable local community here in Boulder. But beyond our commitment to the community, the overarching goal of Populus is doing something that’s impactful on the planet in a positive way.” Populus is launching ThePopulisting.com, which they say is the nation’s first source for average utility data on houses and other residences for sale or rental. The goal, Hutchings says, is to give landlords an incentive to make properties more energyefficient, as well as provide energy efficiency tips to consumers. “We work with every type of client, and everybody’s goals are different,” Hutchings says. “But we believe there is an undercurrent, either because of environmental concerns or cost, that’s making people see that energy efficiency is a value worth pursuing.” Respond: info@boulderganic.com

Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

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Making it easier for you to green your home: From ideas to action By Meagan Forney

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o you know about all the new financial incentives and rebates created to inspire you to take action to make your home more comfortable and energy-efficient? Do you have any idea if your attic or basement even has insulation or how much heat is escaping through leaks and cracks around your windows? Many of us know our homes waste energy, and we mean to get around to doing something about it (after all, sitting by a drafty window is no fun). But we just don’t know where to begin, we expect the cost to be prohibitive, and we’re too busy to take on another project. Even in Boulder, a town with a reputation for being environmentally conscious, it’s actually quite difficult to motivate people to make lifestyle changes, spend money, and make commitments toward cleaner, greener life styles. A report commissioned and released by the Boulder Green Building Guild demonstrates that meeting the community’s GHG emissions reduction goals in the building sector will require substantially more investments in ramping up the building retrofit industry than originally planned. Even with aggressive energy efficiency gains per retrofit, we will have to retrofit more than 200 homes per week over the next 10.5 years to meet our goals. So what is it going to take to overcome the barriers we homeowners face to take on the challenge of installing ener-

gy efficiency measures in our own homes? For many of us it’s going to take upfront capital investments that will need to be paid back in a short time frame. The extensive incentives and rebates now available from utility companies, the state, local municipalities and the federal government are in place right now to overcome that hurdle (Visit www.rechargenews.com to find rebates and incentives). The costs of making these improvements may never look so good again! Secondly, it has to be easy to begin navigating the process — from getting an audit to identifying the right contractors and sorting through bids. Thanks to millions of dollars in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding, new local programs, such as the one in Boulder County, are being designed to specifically address this. Boulder County’s new program, due to launch this fall, will provide a one-stop shop for homeowners to get a significant efficiency retrofit. Imagine a person coming to your door and holding your hand through the entire process — from the audit through the prioritization of investments that will get you the best bang for your buck, to selecting contractors, to the finale of completing and filing paperwork for financing and rebates! And these supportive programs are not just in Boulder County. The City and County of Denver and Garfield County also received ARRA funds and will be designing their own programs to support the retrofit of homes in

Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

these areas. According to Julie Herman, executive director of the Boulder Green Building Guild, “Another one of the hurdles we face in the green building community is getting the value of green features into the real estate market and the appraisal and finance community. I’m thrilled to say that we just took a first huge step in the right direction in Colorado with the IRES MLS system that now incorporates green features as a central component. We are confident other MLS systems, appraisers, and the finance community will follow their lead so homeowners and buyers can truly take advantage of these smart investments.” Because the residential building sector is responsible for about half of our community’s greenhouse gas emissions, we all have a tremendous opportunity to make a difference — by investing in energy-saving strategies for our homes. The good news is that we all benefit from these investments. Homeowners and renters save

ctions you can take to make your home energy-efficient: • Sign up for an energy audit. Xcel offers subsidized, affordable audits so you can understand where the work needs to be done to effectively spend your investment • Do low-cost action items first • Adjust your thermostat at night and when not home • Insulate your water heater and lower the temperature • Install faucet aerators and low-flow showerheads • Use energy-efficient lighting • Seal your home with caulk and weather stripping • Seal and insulate your air ducts • Insulate your home • When it’s time to replace appliances, choose the most efficient you can afford How to Select a Contractor Remember, the cheapest bid is not always the best one. Follow these procedures to discover a Boulder Weekly

money and live in more comfortable environments, and money invested in energy efficiency keeps dollars circulating in our community. Last but not least, we collectively move toward reaching GHG emission reduction goals and have a positive impact on global warming. About BGBG The Boulder Green Building Guild is an association of building professionals dedicated to promoting healthier, resourceefficient homes and workplaces. It has more than 600 members. The organization strives to advance the craft of green building, support members’ environmentally responsible endeavors, provide effective volunteer opportunities, and be the focal point for communication on green building. Its vision is to empower people to build healthy, resource-efficient communities. For more information, go to www.bgbg.org. Forney is member manager of the Boulder Green Building Guild. contractor who offers both a fair price and peace of mind. • Get a referral from friends or nonprofits you trust • www.bgbg.org • www.rechargecolorado.com • Look for a contractor who specializes in the type of work you need done. Familiarize yourself with certifications required to perform this kind of work • Determine which rebates or other financial incentives apply to your project. Ask your contractor how they will ensure that the work is compliant with any incentive program requirements you may qualify for • Check licenses and insurance with your city’s contractors licensing board. • Ask questions like: How much experience do you have with this specific kind of project? Are you insured, and what does your insurance cover? What types of warranties do you offer? Does your company perform regular maintenance? Respond: info@boulderganic.com

Boulderganic Fall ’10

What material should NEVER go in your curbside or workplace recycling bin?

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PLASTIC BAGS!

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Cutting business growing

EcoLogical Lawn Care gaining ground, saving soil by Katherine Creel

t causes five percent of urban air pollution. It uses 580 million gallons of gasoline each year. It wakes you up early on weekends. It’s lawn care. Specifically, gas-powered lawn care. Our lawns now cover more than 25 million acres of America — an area the size of Pennsylvania — and caring for them is not only dirty, it’s loud. A conventional, gas-powered mower can reach noise levels of 100 decibels. Not a nice sound to wake up to on a Saturday morning. One more surprising fact from the Environmental Protection Agency: nationwide, more fuel is spilled each year filling up lawncare equipment than was lost in the entire Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Add to this the fact that landscaping and watering yards accounts for 50 percent of municipal water use, according to Denver Water, and it’s easy to see why some changes are needed. That’s one of the main reasons John DeFilippi of Boulder decided to start ecoLogical Lawn Care, an environmentally friendly, complete lawn management service. Founded in April, ecoLogical Lawn Care crews use electric equipment for residential and smaller-scale projects, and propane-powered equipment, which burns more cleanly than gasoline, for larger projects, such as commercial properties. Taking the commitment to a cleaner environment even further, DeFilippi says the company purchases wind credits from Xcel to offset the energy used to charge their electric equipment. “Most people call me because they want an Boulder Weekly

Boulderganic Fall ’10

worries that come with using Round Up. The other benefit of taking the extra time is a healthier foundation of soil, which in the long run can make care easier. Chemical fertilizers, he says, “sterilize” the soil, leaving it vulnerable. Natural and organic lawn care, however, helps build a strong turf base that is more resistant to drought, pests, weeds and other threats. Electric lawn mower There are two reasons DeFilippi says he felt confiearth-friendly, complete lawn care service,” he dent launching ecoLogical Lawn Care when says, stressing “complete.” and where he did. One, he saw a gap in the EcoLogical offers such a wide range of sermarket. Boulder didn’t have a comprehensive vices — from mowing to irrigation to tree natural lawn care service that could take care trimming to composting — in part, DeFilippi of all of a client’s needs. says, because many homeowners don’t know And two: recession or no recession, homethe best practices when it comes to caring for owners want their lawns to look lovely. their lawn. Or, as DeFilippi says, “Grass keeps growing, With watering, for instance, depth and sateven when the economy doesn’t.” uration are more important than frequency. DeFilippi’s belief was justified from the outThe same is true for cutting: cut frequently, but set. not too short. “The customers started coming in right “Most people need to be educated,” he away,” he says. says. To help do that, he also offers a monthly In September, he says he had around 50 newsletter with tips and information on caring regular customers having their lawns cut and for your yard naturally. other regular tasks taken care of weekly, and While natural and organic lawn care can more than 100 customers using ecoLogical on offer the same results and services as convena non-regular basis — for trimmings, tree tional methods, one thing DeFilippi says he clearing and other jobs. DeFilippi says his goal can’t always provide is instant results. There is to have 250 weekly customers by the end of are organic weed killers that can provide next year’s season. He also expects to make a “instant kill,” but they’re not suitable for turf number of new hires before the year is out. weeds — weeds that crop up in your yard — For more on ecoLogical Lawn Care, visit because they’ll kill everything, grass included. www.ecologicallawncare.com or call 303-444With a little time and patience, however, it’s 3456. possible to have a beautiful lawn without the Respond: info@boulderganic.com September 23, 2010 23

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Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

Changing the future of fuels

OPX Biotechnologies is creating new forms of plastics, diesel and more by Katherine Creel

etroleum is an integral part of our lives, from the gasoline we put in our cars to the plastic shopping bags we use to carry our groceries. In the United States alone, the plastics industry used 331 million barrels of petroleum and natural gas liquids in 2006, according to the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency has stated that plastics production leads to “significant quantities of hazardous byproducts.” For more than 30 years now, scientists have been tinkering with microbes, hoping to find a bio-based alternative to fossil fuels. And while biochemicals have the potential to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels for everything from transportation to plastic production, the problem has been making biochemicals as affordable and simple to use as fossil fuels. Developments have been somewhat slow in coming. Progress can come from unexpected quarters, however. Though he began researching how and why microbes become resistant to antibiotics, CU graduate Michael Lynch ended up co-founding biochemical company OPX Biotechnologies Inc. in 2007. The Efficiency Directed Genome Engineering (EDGE) technology at the heart of OPX was developed from research carried out by Lynch and Assistant Professor Ryan Gill of the CU-Boulder chemical and biological engineering department. The advantage of this technology is that it allows researchers to rapidly and efficiently engineer the microbes that are the basis of biochemical production. OPX is working on several different biochemical products, but plans first to commercialize a process for making bio-based acrylics. Rather than using petroleum, bioacrylic production uses renewable, less harmful feedstock such as sugar to produce acrylic acid, the basis of the polymers used in everything from paint to plastic bags. In the simplest of simple terms, produc-

Boulder Weekly

Boulderganic Fall ’10

ing bioacrylics involves the following stages: bacteria process the feedstock, which causes fermentation. A compound called 3-Hydroxypropionic acid, or 3HP for short, is left behind. The 3HP is separated from the waste water and other leftover materials, and is then used to make acrylic acid, the building block of polymers. Designing job-specific microbes makes the fermentation stage of biochemical production faster and more efficient. The process of finding and tweaking the right microbe for the right feedstock was something that traditionally was an expensive and time-intensive process for researchers working with traditional methods. “They didn’t know what they were changing or why it worked,” says OPX Vice President Mike Rosenberg. By comparison, OPX uses a powerful, full-genome search technology that allows OPX to develop products much more quickly. Rosenberg compares OPX's technology platform to holding a bicycle race with hundreds of cyclists, each with a specific modification. Scientists can then see which cyclist “wins,” that is, which one is most efficient. By comparing many factors at once, researchers can single out the optimal microbe much more quickly. The flexibility of OPX’s technology is one of the company’s main strengths. Instead of spending years designing one or two “superstar” microbes, the way this kind of bioengineering has traditionally been handled, Lynch and his team can quickly analyze a wide range of bacteria and understand not only their innate characteristics but how best to modify them. Success in the laboratory has been accompanied by success in growth and investment, from private investors like Mohr Davidow Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures, Altira Group and X/Seed Capital, and from government grants. In April, OPX received a $6 million grant through the Department of

Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency in a highly competitive selection process. According to Rosenberg, that money will be used to fund the company’s biodiesel research, the second product OPX plans to commercialize. “We’ve been very successful raising money,” Rosenberg says. OPX is now working to raise $50 million as part of the next step in bringing its bioacrylic to commercialization. Right now, OPX is producing bioacrylic at the pilot scale, and a demonstration-scale facility, which will have a fermentation capacity of 5,000 gallons, is planned for 2011. If all goes according to plan, the commercial-scale facility will be up and running in 2013. There have been two primary challenges in making bioacrylic commercially viable, Rosenberg says. One is making the bioacrylic a pure “drop-in” replacement for traditional plastics, with all of the same capabilities and specifications. The other is to bring the cost of production not just equal to but below that of current petroleum-based plastics to give manufacturers an incentive to switch to bio-based acrylics. From a three-member team in 2007, OPX has grown to more than 40 employees and is planning to expand the size of its offices and laboratories as well. In addition to bioacrylics and biodiesel, OPX is investigating a third line of bio-based products to commercialize. Rosenberg says the company will look at where there is a demand, what the cost of development would be and how quickly a product could be brought to market. With the technology coming together, capital flowing in and some of the sharpest talent in the industry, the future is looking bright for OPX. “The company has the opportunity to fundamentally change the biochemical industry,” Rosenberg says. Respond: info@boulderganic.com

September 23, 2010 25

The triple bottom line Why local matters

by Richard Fleming and Mike Overstreet

f there is one lesson welllearned from the recent oil spill in the Gulf Coast, it is that commerce should never weigh more heavily than sustainability — be it environmental, social or economic sustainability. In business, this is referred to as the “triple bottom line.” A sustainable business takes into account three factors — people, planet and profit — and does nothing to harm society, the environment or the economy. Isn’t a focus on the triple bottom line common sense? If you’re Walmart, Tesco or BP, then the answer is “No.” Paradoxically, a lot of big companies have little concern for their own selfdestructive and cannibalistic business practices. Alan Greenspan’s shock at the banking industry’s inability to factor its own self-interest into its investment efforts is just one of many examples. Companies with a onedimensional focus on profit margins are of little value to the communities they infest. “Infest” is a harsh word, but fiscal cancer can hardly be described in nicer terms. Essentially, big business models (known in academies as “Category Killers,” businesses so large they monopolize local markets and squash niche

26 September 23, 2010

stores previously serving the community) offer few benefits: lower-cost products and greater convenience to time-taxed Americans (both only occasionally true). The disadvantages are numerous and include increased noise pollution and traffic congestion, toxic runoff from blacktop parking lots, inefficient use of building space, increased crime, higher unemployment and aggressive and unfair competition with local, small businesses. Although there are many reasons why Americans are so price-driven, time-stressed, and drawn to big-box stores, we really don’t need them. Change has to start somewhere. As Dan King, owner of the Boulder Outlook — a zero-waste hotel — puts it, “The world needs a lot of changes and none of us can change the world as a whole. What we can change is the world around us, [and] we do that by acting locally.” Like the push to recycle, creating sustainable business practices starts with individuals. The action each of us needs to take is simple: Buy local. Consider this fact from the Institute for Local SelfReliance: For every dollar spent at a local establishment,

Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

$0.45 recirculates throughout the local economy, versus only $0.14 from a dollar spent at a big-box store (most of which is recirculated as payroll). Makes sense. If you spend money at local shops, the store owners are going to use that money to buy groceries, register their kids for a local soccer team, make a loan payment to their local bank, and so on. The money stays in the community. Additionally, each transaction is subject to nesses that is being held inside sales tax, which rapidly acceler- the Outlook Hotel and hosted ates the funding available for by the Boulder Independent government programs, park Business Alliance (BIBA). BIBA development and local infrais a nonprofit organization that structure. All of these things advocates for local businesses are “services that we enjoy,” and educates the public about explains Liz Hanson, representhe importance of shopping tative for the City of Boulder’s locally. Economic Vitality Program. BIBA offers small business Many people argue that owners the opportunity to conlower prices at big box stores nect and forge alliances with outweigh the benefits of buying other entrepreneurs, and has local, which is false. If you comdone much to create a buzz pare the cost of a full shopping around building a more resilient AT cart at a big box store to a full GET local DISCOUNTS economy — including BIBA BUSINESSES. shopping cart at a local store, their Local And Loving It disongoing at participating it’s often cheaper at the local Cardholders countreceive card thatdiscounts Boulder resiBoulder County businesses. Discounts cannot be used in store. Shopping locally also dentswithcan at more than 170 conjunction otheruse promotions, coupons or discounts. on in-stock items only. Offers may be changed or means more choices, more help Valid businesses around Boulder discontinued at any time. from knowledgeable service County.9:13 AM Page 2 BIBA Card Output:Layout 1 2/20/09 providers and stronger commuBy using the cards, Boulder Cardholder signature nity ties and relationships. residents not only save money Additionally, shopping locally on purchases, but also make a helps create more jobs, reduces significant difference in their Card expiration our impact on the environment, community. and increases funding for local For a list ofThe card, as well as an participating vendors and current discounts visit nonprofits and city services. online directory of BIBA memBoulderIndependentBusiness.org Buying locally can produce a bers, can be found at boulderinflourishing local economy and dependentbusiness.org. BIBA’s self-sustained community. website not only helps increase This Dec. 4, you can meet its members’ visibility, but helps local Boulder vendors face-toidentify them as active particiface at the Local and Loving It BIBA CARD pants5/20/10 in community support. Fest — an expo featuring localRespond: info@boulderganic. ly owned and independent busi- com

Boulder Weekly

Boulderganic Fall ’10

September 23, 2010 27

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For businesses with questions, Natural Capital Solutions has answers

[

by Matt Reed

courtesy of Toby Russell

“It’s free money —

]

it’s money that the or the past seven sustainability through an atmoyears, Natural sphere of synergy and integracompany is now Capitalism Solutions, tion. based in Longmont, While some members of the making on its bottom has been working with current progressive movement companies, corporations, govtend to label certain groups or line every year.” ernmental organizations such companies good or bad, NCS Toby Russell as the U.N. and various cities instead focuses on where large to help them implement susimprovements in sustainability tainability measures. can emerge, regardless of the “What we’ve been doing is consulting saved that company $700,000,” says Russell. “reputation.” work with various companies and Fortune “So we’re going in and finding where the One example of this practice is their 500 companies on employee engagement and hidden value of a business is. It’s free money work with Wal-Mart. educating and involving their employees in the — it’s money that the company is now mak“Wal-Mart is an amazing example of a sustainability process as well as working at a ing on its bottom line every year,” says company that, although I personally don’t higher level to help them understand what Russell. shop there — I don’t like some of their labor sustainability is,” says Toby Russell, CEO of While NCS’s work also addresses some policies — they are making huge leaps to NCS. of the climate issues that they’re passionate progress the sustainable movement,” says In addition to large sustainability projects, about, they don’t frame any of their work Russell. NCS also works with smaller businesses and around global warming or similar arguments. Wal-Mart is now demanding that all of its corporate clients to make them more effiInstead, they frame it around the fact that suppliers answer to its sustainability scorecient and increase their sustainability. there’s money to be made around existing card, which consists of 12 questions based “It’s the little projects we like,” says ability, not just through energy savings but around climate, water and waste. It is also Russell. “One time we went into a distributhrough educating employees and giving them looking at preferring certain suppliers over tion center that was essentially a 7 milliona better place to work. others because of their sustainable practices. square-foot warehouse. They had a bunch of “If people can work in a company that has “That’s huge — that’s a game-shifter. They 500-watt lightbulbs shining down on top of a higher cause than just creating a product, get that buying local, and if their suppliers are boxes.” NCS noticed the workers below then they’re going to stay there longer and more efficient, that improves their bottom already had individual lights to see what they they’re going to be happier and more produc- line,” says Russell. were doing, rendering the overhead lighting tive,” Russell says. While Russell says he sees environmental inessential. “So we went in there and flipped Advocating for a cleaner and more effiand social advocacy as important, he views a switch, and that alone saved them cient business model is essential for the wellthe work that NCS does as a pragmatic, $650,000,” says Russell. being of our planet, communities and econoeffective solution, once the work of advocacy Additionally, NCS worked with a compamy. However, NCS sees this happening natugroups gains the public’s attention. ny that had 6,300 computers left on continu- rally through better business practices. “I don’t want to come across as not highously because the IT department believed “By reducing your impact and engaging lighting the importance of advocacy, because that turning computers on and off regularly your employees, you will have a better busiit’s through advocacy that companies and govwould lower the lifetime of the computer, ness — you will have less risk, you will create ernments get highlighted with their inadequacies and can come to us to have a conversawhich is not true. They also left computers more profit, you will have better employee tion about how to fix them. I think advocacy on all the time to do backups. retention — all these things. If you speak the “The reality is that you can leave a combusiness language to the businesses, they tend plays a very important role, but then what are the next steps after someone’s attention has puter on one night a week and that will sufto get it,” Russell says. been captured? That’s where we fit in.” fice, so literally changing the IT policy [and] Instead of pushing for sustainability Respond:info@boulderganic.com turning off their computers most nights through revolutionary activism, NCS fosters

Boulder Weekly

Boulderganic Fall ’10

September 23, 2010 29

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Apothecary vs. pharmacy by Quibian Salazar-Moreno

Susan France

ith the prices of drugs continually rising and the public growing frustrated about not getting the results they need with them, more consumers are flocking to apothecaries for alternative medicines. According to the Centers for Disease Control, over the past 10 years more Americans have been forgoing pharmaceutical medicines covered by their health insurance and paying out of pocket for natural remedies for everyday sicknesses, chronic pain and other problems. And where are people finding these natural remedies? Sure, the local pharmacy might have some pills or medicines that are considered natural or organic, but local apothecaries are where the widest selections of natural remedies and homeopathic medicines can be found. “We offer natural remedies for every condition, and we rely on the wisdom of Chinese medicine, classic homeopathy and also functional medicine,” says Kathy Thorpe, co-founder of Six Persimmons Apothecary and a certified classical homeopath. “And we have our practitioners and a clinic in the back that are extremely seasoned and experienced. People can come in and ask a questions like ‘Is there a natural remedy for this?’ or ‘I have this certain condition, is there something that would work in alternative medicine that would be just as effective or more effective [as a pharmaceutical]?’” Thorpe also considers the openness and relationships with customers an advantage over the local pharmacy. People who frequent apothecaries not only get a great choice of alternative medicines and all the ingredients to make their medicines, but they also get counsel and advice on how to improve their Boulder Weekly

Boulderganic Fall ’10

looking at things like strengthening your immune system.” Strengthening one’s immune system isn’t the only remedy an apothecary can offer. There are natural remedies for colds, stomachaches, headaches, sleep problems, arthritis, anxiety, depression, acne and a whole list of other issues. But when it comes to more serious ailments like diabetes or a major heart condition, Thorpe suggests seeing a specialist. “If someone comes in and it sounds like pneumonia, we’ll send them to their doctor,” she says. At the same time, Luna doesn’t look at pharmacies as a competitor, but more like a good resource for her and her customers. “I would say they were a wonderRebecca Luna, owner ful, lucky ally because they can focus of Rebecca’s Herbal Apothecary & Supply on what they focus on and I can focus what I focus on,” says Luna, health and suggestions on preventative care. whose apothecary also carries teas and skin It’s a lasting relationship that isn’t found at a creams. “Our focus is botanical medicine; we pharmacy. can do that and do that really well. But I try “We’ve been around a long time,” says to stay really focused on that one thing. So I Rebecca Luna, owner of Rebecca’s Apothecary. love the pharmacies, even the integrated phar“We are really community-oriented; we know macies, because they have pills and that sort our customer and we get to watch their kids of thing we don’t have. It’s wonderful to have grow up. Plus, anyone who works behind the that resource to send our customers to if counter here has years and years of herbal they can’t find what they need through us.” training, so I think it’s unique to have so many But unlike the pharmacies, there’s affection years of experience in one store.” and a dedication to the craft of creating and “If you go to a doctor, they don’t go any distributing natural and organic remedies. It deeper to find what’s going on and why that would be tough to find that kind of passion might be happening,” Thorpe adds. “We actual- anywhere else. ly look at why is this happening and ask if “For myself, and I think I can speak for my there are different stresses in your life, what’s co-workers, we are desperately in love with happening that’s actually making your immune botanical medicines and these plants,” Luna system a little bit weaker. So in a sense we try says. “There’s just a genuine, total love affair to look at it holistically, and sometimes we’ll with what we do. I think that also sets us apart actually give them something that will cure and has a lot to do with our success.” that particular thing right then. But we’re also Respond: info@boulderganic.com September 23, 2010 31

Toxins be gone! Get clean and stay clean by Oakland L. Childers

ven the best-intentioned eaters, exercisers and shoppers will, at some point, come into contact with things they’d rather not have floating around in their body. Toxins are in the air we breathe, the water we drink and, perhaps most obviously, the food we eat. Minimizing the amount of that yucky stuff isn’t hard, but it does take a little more attention to detail in the grocery store and a good bit of diligence in almost every part of life. The best way to stay relatively toxin-free is to eat a better diet, according to Dani Little, a registered dietician and the in-store eating specialist for the Pearl Street Whole Foods store. “There’s quite a few ways that a shopper can approach food in hopes of minimizing toxins,” she says. “One is in the produce section. Whenever you can, choose organic fruits and vegetables.” Little says conventionally grown produce can be eight times more likely than fresh organic produce to carry multiple pesticide residues. Imported produce has even higher levels of pesticide residue. But what if you can’t always afford to buy organic fruits and vegetables? It can be quite costly and, without much trouble, one can blow one’s entire grocery budget before leaving the produce section. Little says it’s OK to shop conventional, as long as you choose your battles carefully. “I would suggest buying the conventional fruits and vegetables with a tougher skin or a skin you won’t eat, like a banana, thereby discarding a lot of the pesticides,” says Little. Little points to the “dirty dozen,” the fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide residue, as things to either buy organic or avoid altogether. These filthy fruits and veg-

32 September 23, 2010

gies include peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, domestic blueberries, imported grapes, spinach, kale and collard greens, lettuce and potatoes. Buying the organic versions of these items can reduce your exposure to pesticides by 80 percent, according to a study by the Environmental Working Group. Another big contaminant present in our food is mercury, which shows up in fish. Little says the bigger the fish, the higher the levels of mercury tend to be, due to a process called biomagnification. Put simply, tiny fish are eaten by slightly larger fish. Those fish are then eaten by bigger fish, and the cycle continues. By the time a large fish — like a swordfish, shark, king mackerel or tuna — gets hooked, it has eaten all of those fish indirectly, and absorbed all the mercury the smaller fish absorbed from the water and other fish. Little says the smaller the fish, the better it will be for your body, so stick with things like wild salmon and halibut. Another big issue is milk, according to Little. Conventionally produced milk can contain all sorts of nasty extras, the best known of which is recombinant bovine growth hormone. Little says none of the milk sold at Whole Foods contains this beastly ingredient

designed to make cows mature faster and produce more milk. The jury is still out on exactly what it does to children, but some studies have linked it to premature development in adolescents. In general, using meat and dairy products as side items rather than the main course is always a good idea, Little says. Animals store toxins in their fat tissue and pass them on to anything that ingests those tissues. “If we consume that animal we would be consuming any toxins in that animal,” says Little. Remember the big fish/little fish analogy. It applies here, too. Other things to avoid, Little says, are canned goods, which stew inside a plastic liner until you open them, and manufactured snacks, which she says often contain hydrogenated oils. “Some nutritionists say hydrogenated oils interfere with the natural absorption of good fats,” says Little. There’s also a lengthy list of things to avoid that just seem obvious: diet sodas, artificial sweeteners, artificially colored foods like candy and colored cereals — mostly things found on the inside aisles of the grocery store. Stick to the outer edges, Little says, and you’ll do just fine. Another tip: Little says never microwave anything in plastic. “Plastic will actually leach into the food and can disrupt your endocrine system,” she says. Try to avoid keeping bulk foods in plastic for a long period of time, too. “When you get home, transfer those foods into a jar and store them in the refrigerator,” says Little. Also, avoid processed meats like hot dogs, bacon and sausage, which often contain sodi-

Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

um nitrates. But what if you haven’t been the best eater over the years? Kat Oldfield, a whole-body team member and nutritional consultant at Whole Foods, says the gunk of a life spent eating poorly builds up, literally. “Most of us have along the colon toxins trapped in the mucus lining,” says Oldfield. The best way to remove those toxins, she says, is a cleanse. “The idea is to sweep through the colon, pull those things through,” says Oldfield. “We don’t always eliminate toxins. [A cleanse] gives you more fiber than you would normally be eating on a day-to-day basis. We’re supposed to have about 35 grams of fiber each day.” Most people don’t even come close to that amount, according to Oldfield. During a cleanse, she says, most people try to increase that amount significantly. Oldfield says there are a number of options when it comes to cleanses. “You can keep it very basic or buy a kit, which are usually two weeks,” says Oldfield. The most popular cleanse is called the master cleanse, a homemade concoction made with water, lemons, grade B maple syrup and cayenne powder (to increase circulation). The tonic is mixed and consumed three to six times per day for three days or as many as 10. “It’s easy to get this stuff at any grocery store, and you get a full-on cleanse and alkalizing,” says Oldfield. She also recommends talking to your doctor before beginning a cleanse, especially if you take a lot of medications. Large amounts of fiber, she says, can

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prevent some medications from being absorbed. During the cleanse, she says, it’s important to drink a lot of water (coconut water is good because it adds potassium to your body) and to follow your instincts. “If you do it for three days and you feel like you’ve accomplished what you want, stop there,” says Oldfield. People doing a cleanse can experience flu-like symptoms, not a sign of good things. Oldfield cautions against “crossing the line into feeling really sick.” If you get dizzy, she says, watch out. It’s a sign you need to eat as soon as possible. Once the cleanse is over, use the opportunity to change your eating habits. But start slowly. “After a cleanse you need to re-enter the typical world slowly,” says Oldfield. “Try to get the biggest bang from your cleanse by continuing to eat a high level of greens.” Oldfield suggests shooting for about 25 percent greens and 25 percent fruit. Avoiding red meat and cheese will also help keep things moving in your colon. Little suggests increasing the amount of cruciferous vegetables you eat. These include broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, kale, cabbage, bok choi, turnip greens and watercress. These dark, leafy greens support the liver’s natural detoxification process, ridding our bodies of pollutants we breathe, eat and drink. Another good rule of thumb, she says, is to look for colorful vegetables and fruits. The color comes from nutrients called anthocyanins and phytonutrients that you can’t get anywhere else. “That’s how powerful our food is,” says Little. Respond: info@boulderganic. com

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Boulderganic Fall â&#x20AC;&#x2122;10 Boulder Weekly

Teas, please by Elizabeth Miller

Elizabeth Miller

n a country full of dining choices for the plate, more people have started exploring what culinary options come in a tea cup. “The numbers for premium tea sales have skyrocketed in the last few years,” said Sara Martinelli, owner and tea blender for the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse and The Huckleberry in Louisville. “Loose-leaf specialty tea is a huge market now. When we opened, it really wasn’t.” People have been educating themselves and developing a more sophisticated palate, she says, discovering what black teas, green teas, white teas, oolong teas, puehr teas and herbal infusions have to offer. “There are so many options. It would take a lifetime to explore them all,” Martinelli says. She compares teas to wines — black tea is like the red wine, green is like white wine, and white tea is like champagne. Except, in this metaphor, all the grapes would be the same, because all tea comes from the same plant: camellia sinensis. Differences in how tea looks and tastes come from where it’s grown, when it’s harvested and how it’s processed. “Like wine, different teas go with different foods or times of the day,” Martinelli says. “But I’m really adamant that personal preference is the most important thing.” • Black tea is fully oxidized and is what most people know as tea — the full, bold tea you can put milk and sugar in. • Green tea is not oxidized and is lighter in flavor, and sometimes more subtle or open to influences, based on the region it’s grown in and the way it’s processed after harvesting. • White tea is made from the fresh bud of the plant, just dried and barely oxidized. It’s becoming more common, but 10 years ago, Martinelli says, finding a white tea was a special occasion. • Oolong tea is between 2 percent and 80 percent oxidized, giving it a massive range of options and an ability to hold both smoky and floral flavors. • Puehr tea is fermented. “It’s an aged tea, so it tastes like wet, like dirt, but it grows on you after a while,” Martinelli says. She also stocks blends of children’s teas, specifically crafted with herbs known to be good for kids and without caffeine, and dog teas, which can aid canines with digestion problems or hyperactivity. Rebecca Luna of Rebecca’s Herbal Apothecary says her training in herbal medicine began with her teacher brewing a cup of tea. At the apothecary, her goal has been to provide everything a person needs to use or make botanical medicines, includ-

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Boulderganic Fall ’10

A tea ceremony at Ku Cha House of Tea

ing teas. She brews from herbs — not the same camellia sinensis used for beverage teas. Luna listed chamomile tea as a favorite, both for her and her clients. It’s good for relaxing at the end of the day, boosting the immune system and delivering nutrients, she says. Nettles for tea have also been popular. “There’s an old herbal saying — when in doubt, nettles,” she says. Nettles deliver a high nutritional content that can help support hair and bone growth, and have a sinus-drying effect that can be used for allergies. Luna compared marshmallow root to a warm hug from her grandmother and says she sells plenty of that and licorice root, another moistening herb that can help the lungs in a dry climate. Mints, which are said to aid digestion, are also popular. A visit to Ku Cha House of Tea doesn’t just open the teapot to new varieties of teas, which Ku Cha stocks plenty of, but might also challenge the idea of brewing by the pot and drinking just one cup. Ku Cha customers can get a tea set to practice the traditional gong fu tea ceremony in the Ku Cha tea room. In the gong fu ceremony, loose leaf tea is placed in a single bowl and steeped with boiling water only briefly — for a minute or two — before being strained into a small teapot. Tea is

served in cups that hold just a few tablespoons of tea. One pot of leaves is brewed several times. The ceremony slows down the process of drinking tea, says Ku Cha owner Qin Liu, and makes the experience a more social one. Tea arrived in Japan with Buddhist monks, and so came imbued with a sense of spirituality that the Japanese tea ceremony preserves. A Japanese tea ceremony takes extended study to learn. In China, casual tea drinking developed from medicinal teas to teas consumed every day and socially. The Chinese tea ceremony can be taught with one brief demonstration. “It’s more social than spiritual,” Liu says. The taste of the tea changes throughout the ceremony. “This way will help you fully appreciate the flavor of the leaf,” he says. “Different tastes will steep out at different temperatures, so if you steep all the leaves together you’ll get a strong pot of tea, but you won’t get all the different tastes.” Because all teas come from the same species of plant, the different varieties of teas share many of the same health benefits, like the antioxidants and digestive aids. “In China, it’s very much everybody’s gift,” Liu says. “It’s a medicine that’s become everybody’s drink.” What’s in their cup: Qin Liu — Mostly green teas and oolong teas. “It really depends on the mood,” he says. “That’s something fascinating about tea, that you can always find something to fit your mood.” Sara Martinelli — Boulder Breakfast Blend, a mix of assam, keenun and yunnan black teas, hearty enough to take milk well. Rebecca Luna — The powerful and multi-tasking chamomile. Katie Browning, floor manager for the apothecary — Linden tea: “It’s one of the most divinetasting teas, and there have been times in my life I don’t think I would have made it through without it,” she says. The tea comes from the linden tree and is said to help with sleep and stress levels. Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse 1770 13th St., 303-442-4993 Ku Cha tea house 2015 13th St., 303-443-3612 Rebecca’s Herbal Apothecary 1227 Spruce St., 303-443-8878 Respond: info@boulderganic.com September 23, 2010 35

Local spas employ organic products and practices by Heather May Koski

St. Julien Spa

ike many local restaurants, various spas are embracing Boulder’s vast organic market. Through the use of locally made products and organic treatments, spa services are becoming increasingly sustainable and popular. By introducing holistically inspired approaches and eliminating chemical treatments, local spas like St. Julien Spa, Sensorielle Spa and Tru Skincare are healing guests, beginning from within. St. Julien Spa Director Candis Ayers says their spa philosophy is to keep it simple, organic and local whenever possible. “Beauty is found within from taking care of ourselves,” Ayers says. “Start from there and then you are able to take care of others, family and community.” As a full-service spa, St. Julien offers massages, facials, waxing, body, nail and hair services. Ayers says all of their product lines are organic and include brands like Inara, Eminence and Luzern. They also offer specialty spa treatments like the “Mountain Mojito,” which combines fresh mint from the St. Julien garden with the Inara sugar and oil to create an invigorating scrub. Ayers says the rocks used in their “Rock On” massage are hand-chosen from Basalt. “We tailor our treatments to treat the various conditions one may encounter here,” she says. “For example, our facial line Luzern has a beautiful oxygenating line, and Eminence offers a hydrating wrap to combat

36 September 23, 2010

dryness.” While a large portion of St. Julien Spa’s clientele originates from the hotel, Ayers says about 40 percent of spa guests are local residents. “We are constantly looking for ways to improve our sustainability, support the community and provide the highest quality services we can,” she says. Like its downtown neighbor, Sensorielle Spa, located at 1801 13th St., uses all organic

and local product lines. Owner Jewl Petteway says her spa is a wellbeing center that offers many holistic services. “We believe that beauty comes from the inside,” Petteway says. “If we can treat people holistically, we can make people healthy and happy.” Apart from employing local, organic product lines, Sensorielle is also a green, sustainably built spa. Petteway says she thinks the two components are reflective of Boulder’s community. “Boulder is a giving place where people really care about others,” she says. “We really embody that here. We have a really earthy atmosphere, plants everywhere and a friendly staff.” Sensorielle Marketing Coordinator Clasina Smith says the prema holisitic massage and facial are their most popular services. “Lots of people who work on computers like the deep tissue massage, which is for back and shoulder pain,” Smith says. Tru Skincare, Boulder’s newest spa at 820 Pearl St., echoes the philosophy that beauty and health start from within. Owner Cynthia Sass, who’s been a makeup artist for more than 20 years, studied at the Concentric Healing Institute in Boulder. “I want to help people who are not looking for a quick fix,” Sass says. “I help people who are not looking for a machine or cream that will change their lives. If you’re willing to do the work starting from the inside, taking care of your body, then I’m willing to work from the outside.”

Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

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Tru Skincare, which has been in business two months, uses Sanítas Skincare products. Developed and distributed in Boulder, Sanítas means good health in Latin, which is appropriate. “I have yet to find a product line that is as effective, responsible and wholesome as this line is,” Sass says. “The product developers wanted to create a quality, active product to nourish the skin. The quality of the product and the philosophy are aligned with my own standards.” The spa offers a multitude of different types of facials, peels, waxing, tinting, makeup and boosts, which are add-on spa services like hand and feet rejuvenation and eye and lip treatments. “It’s about the touch and healing and getting to a level of relaxation that helps promote healing in the skin,” Sass says. “The Mudstone Facial is a healing, meditative, centering facial that deals with the body as much as it does with the face. It incorporates feet, hands, massage and pressure-point work.” Sass says nothing at Tru Skincare is highly aggressive. “I don’t do chemical peels, that’s not what my offering is about,” she says. “My practice is a gentle healing perspective.” Sass says she recommends getting enough rest and having personal time on a daily basis as part of a wellbeing routine. “Make sure you’re drinking enough water, moving and carving out 20-30 minutes a day for yourself for quiet,” she says. Sass also emphasizes that healthy fat is essential in your diet. “It changes every part of your biology,” she says. “We live in a society that has vastly become more and more obese, yet we’re starved for healthy fat.” The spa features the Tru Smoothie, which is loaded with antioxidants, fats and fiber. “You’ll notice a change in how you feel and look,” Sass says of the smoothie. “It takes effort, thought and energy to take care of yourself. The initial energy to come up with a plan is the hardest, but if you get it started, that’s 80 percent of the work there.” Respond:info@boulderganic.com

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38 September 23, 2010

Boulderganic Fall ’10 Boulder Weekly

Controversy over a cure

Epileptic says cannabis reduces his seizures by Jefferson Dodge

ome might say 22-year-old Tim Dagiau has had a hard life so far, being an epileptic whose two brain surgeries and dozen drugs did virtually nothing to stop the violent seizures he’s endured since the age of 10. But something has given him his life back, and it didn’t involve a scalpel or a man-made, synthetic chemical. It’s marijuana. As a kid, he was averaging about six seizures a day, and he’d have to come home from school early because the many epilepsy drugs he was on were making him fall asleep in class. “I’ve been on 12 drugs, and I haven’t responded positively to one,” Dagiau says. “I’ve taken about 26,000 pills in the past 10 years. It’s been at least 10 a day. When I was 16, I was taking 16 a day.” He underwent brain surgery at age 17 to remove half of his right temporal lobe, where most of the seizures were originating. While the surgery was successful in reducing the frequency of his 10-a-day seizures from the right side, the seizures that had been coming from the left temporal lobe increased in frequency — from one every six months to monthly episodes of five seizures a day for three Tim Dagiau days. And the seizures were much more violent, Dagiau says. “You could put broken glass under my face during a seizure before my surgery, and I wouldn’t have hurt myself at all,” he says. Dagiau says he never did recreational drugs in high school, partially because he was worried how they would interact with his epilepsy medications. But after getting a green light from his doc, he tried cannabis. The initial result, he says, was a blank mind — a short, welcome respite from all of the memories of past seizures that constantly haunt him. “It was nice to have that three-minute break,” he says of the mental time-out that marijuana provided. “I had not felt that in eight years.” While he was preparing to transfer from Marquette University in Milwaukee, he began considering colleges in states that had legalized medical marijuana, just in case he wanted to try that remedy again. “I was tired of falling on sidewalks and dealing with paramedics,” Dagiau says.

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Boulderganic Fall ’10

He moved to Colorado in 2007 to attend Colorado State University, where he tried it again and had “the same blackout of thoughts.” Still, as far as he knew, the effects of cannabis didn’t extend beyond that temporary clear-headedness. He had another brain surgery to remove the rest of his right temporal lobe, and the swelling in his brain that resulted caused temporary paralysis on his left side. The use of his arm and leg came back in about four days, but he couldn’t move his left hand for three weeks, Dagiau recalls. “That freaks you out,” he says. “It was a month before I could open my hand enough to pick up a glass.” So he went to University of Colorado Hospital to see a doctor about getting his medical marijuana card. Back then, Dagiau says, most cardholders were genuinely ill or had chronic pain — there weren’t as many recreational users obtaining cards as there are today. Currently, he notes, there is an eight-month wait for a medical marijuana card, but back then it only took him a week and a half. During his junior year, after he regularly started smoking cannabis, his seizures completely stopped for three months straight. “I thought I could go home and not have my family say, ‘OK Tim, lie down and turn to your side,’” he says. “I don’t like having seizures around my family.” And Dagiau says he was very careful and selfconscious about his marijuana use. He put school first and never smoked before class — only right before bed or in the middle of the night, when he knew he had several hours to sleep it off. “I wanted to be responsible, and I ended up with a 3.6 GPA, so I did pretty well,” he says. After three months with no seizures, he planned a trip to his hometown in New Jersey to see his family, but he couldn’t bring his cannabis because it was not legal in that state. When he got home, without his marijuana, he began having seizures again. So now his family visits occur in Colorado. Dagiau went from 15 seizures a month to one every two months, and he attributes that to cannabis. He still takes drugs for his epilepsy, but fewer than he used to, and he has met a few other epilepsy patients who have had similar

results with pot, he says. “I’m not telling you it’s a cure-all drug, but marijuana won’t make my hair fall out,” he says. Dagiau’s doctor, Carl Bazil, head of neurology at New York Presbyterian Hospital, says that more research may be needed to determine whether Dagiau’s case is an anomaly. “Basically there are no controlled or scientific studies showing marijuana actually helps epilepsy,” Bazil says. “There are indications, because in Tim’s case it was dramatic, considering he was someone who had pretty much failed every drug out there, had unsuccessful brain surgeries to try and fix his epilepsy, but noticed that when he smoked marijuana his seizures stopped.” But Dagiau’s new high road has not always been smooth. Once, the manager of the apartment complex where he was living went into his apartment when Dagiau was not home, found his marijuana, and told him, “If we ever see it again, we’re calling the police.” So he flushed his pot down the toilet and, three days later, he had a seizure, fell down, scraped up his face and chipped his tooth. After finding another place to live, he got a vaporizer so that no one could detect the smell of marijuana smoke coming from his home. Dagiau expresses frustration about the scores of people in Colorado who have gotten their medical marijuana cards even though they don’t have a legitimate medical need, because he feels it tarnishes the image of bona fide patients like him. “People think I’m a 22-year-old pothead.” Dagiau has become an advocate not for the legalization of marijuana, but for medicinal cannabis research. He is director of public relations for the Medicinal Marijuana Advocates Group. He also plans to start a student chapter of the Epilepsy Foundation at CSU. Dagiau no longer has suicidal thoughts, and he’s a far cry from the fat kid who became anorexic in seventh grade. He’s convinced that marijuana has changed his life. “I don’t have any social anxiety,” Dagiau says. “I used to be very reclusive; I was always indoors because I was terrified of people seeing me seize. Now I say, ‘I’ve gotta go outside. My future is outside.’” Respond: info@boulderganic.com September 23, 2010 39

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