’ Coastal Virginia s
GreenMagazine 2017-2018
In Partnership with
Outdoor Spaces, Domestic Oases An Ocean Of Options For Living A Little Greener In Our Own Backyards
Plus: Greenbeats
Eco-Artists at Work Going Locavore COVA HRGREEN 17.indd 1
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What is
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e’re glad you asked! askHRgreen.org is your go-to resource for all things green in Hampton Roads – from recycling tips and pointers for keeping local waterways clean to water-saving ideas and simple steps to make local living easy on the environment. Launched in 2011, the regionwide public awareness and education campaign is administered through the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, with financial support provided
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by the following member localities and agencies: The cities of Chesapeake, Franklin, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Poquoson, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, and Williamsburg; the counties of Gloucester, Isle of Wight, James City, Southampton, Surry and York; the town of Smithfield; and the Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD). Like askHRgreen.org on Facebook, follow on Twitter and Instagram, tune in to YouTube and catch the “Let’s Talk Green” blog, written by a team of local experts.
Our Programs • Bay Star Homes – Pledge to make your home a Bay Star Home by adopting eight environmental practices in your house and yard. Receive a beautiful yard flag in return, plus other goodies and incentives. • Environmental Education Mini-Grants – $500 grants for green-themed projects in the classroom are available for Hampton Roads school teachers, youth leaders and organizations working with youth. • Green Learning Guide – Download this free educational classroom guide designed to teach the region’s sixth grade
students about our Hampton Roads environment. • Green News – Sign up to receive our askHRgreen.org bimonthly newsletter filled with news, tips and regional reminders. • Pet Waste Station Grant Program – Don’t let your neighborhood go to the dogs! Hampton Roads neighborhoods, homeowners associations and community groups may apply for a grant to receive their own pet waste stations. • Online Media Toolkit – Visit our askHRgreen.org Online Media Toolkit and download an array of materials to share including brochures, posters, rack cards, tip
cards, radio spots, graphics, articles and more (ideal for neighborhood newsletters!). • Recycling at School – Bring recycling to your school by following this all-inclusive how-to guide, and download and share our askHRgreen.org Classroom Pledge! • Storm Drain Medallion Program – We provide a lesson plan, how-to PowerPoint presentation and the medallions for marking storm drains in your community. You provide the people. Check for details on all of these programs and more at www.askHRgreen.org.
How To Reach Us askHRgreen.org The Regional Building 723 Woodlake Drive, Chesapeake, VA 23320 Phone (757) 420-8300 • Fax (757) 523-4881 • TTY (757) 390-2578 www.askHRgreen.org/contact
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Contents
11
welcome
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4 Outdoor Spaces, Domestic Oases An ocean of options for living a little greener in our own backyards
GreenBeats
6 Grants for Plants—With help from askHRgreen.org, youth groups improve the environment and their education. PLUS: Energetic About Energy; Beyond the Bin; 8 Leaving Their Mark—Girl Scout Troop 22 joins the clean community commission storm drain marker project; Earn A Green Star. 9 Eco-Artists at Work Local creators make a statement using repurposed goods and environmental themes 11 Going Locavore Perspectives on farm-to-table food culture in Coastal Virginia
hat constitutes a green lifestyle – and who in Hampton Roads lives it? These questions were posed when askHRgreen.org and the publishers of Coastal Virginia Magazine gathered to brainstorm the editorial features, regional news, tips and infographics that make up this 2017-18 issue of Green Magazine. Does living the green life have to do with creating living shorelines and planting hardy natives that will survive our hot, humid summers? Is it embraced by a broad base of residents, from artists who incorporate eco themes into their work, to chefs who are passionate (dare we say, zealous) about growing, preparing and serving up tasty, locally-sourced foods? And, is it top of mind with our local educators, students and youth, such as the members of Girl Scout Troop 22 who earned patches for installing storm drain markers? The answers are yes, yes and yes! You can read all about it, along with tips to improve your yard and build a rain barrel, a puzzler for the kids and a ’fridge-worthy guide to where to recycle what in Hampton Roads. These articles first appeared in Coastal Virginia Magazine issues that ran from May 2016 to January 2017. We are grateful to their editorial staff, talented writers and sales team, who helped us compile these items into this collective. We invite you to put the practices you will read about to good use. For those of you who are already living the green life through recycling, scaling back on the lawn fertilizer, keeping grease out of your kitchen drains and choosing tap over bottled water, we thank you. If you’re “green” to such practices and interested in getting started, you’ve come to the right place. There are simple steps that everyone can take to have a positive impact on our region’s home, sweet home. Questions? No worries. Just askHRgreen.org. Sincerely, Katie Cullipher and Rebekah Eastep askHRgreen.org Team Leaders Hampton Roads Planning District Commission kcullpher@hrpdcva.gov; reastep@hrpdcva.gov
15 Principles for WaterWise Landscaping; What Do You Know About H2O?
Published For
Published By
A Division of
Meet some of the many faces behind askHRgreen.org! The region-wide public awareness and education campaign is supported by representatives from 17 cities and counties in Hampton Roads, along with the HRSD. To learn more about all things good for you just
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Pho t o and de si g n by WPL Land scape and D e si g n
Outdoor Spaces, Domestic Oases
Blooming plants as part of a buffer restoration project in Virginia Beach.
An Ocean Of Options For Living A Little Greener In Our Own Backyards | By Betsy DiJulio
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aylord Nelson, an American politician and father of Earth Day, asserted that “The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity ... ” As such, we citizens of Coastal Virginia are very rich indeed. And, as these six sets of homeowners attest, there are many ways to protect that wealth right in our own back—and front— yards. The best approach will be shaped, in large part, by the conditions of the land itself in relation to some basic tenets of sustainability and eco-savviness.
In 1607, when everybody showed up, we didn’t have water quality issues. —Billy Almond From living shorelines to buffer restoration and even butterfly gardens, the options are many and varied, depending on a variety of factors, including how we see ourselves living on our little pieces of paradise. Billy Almond, vice-president of landscape architecture with the firm WPL, asserts that his company’s first ethic is preservation. In particular, their cause is “threading together the network of fragmented forests in our area” that serve as wildlife corridors whose connectivity allows for healthy migration. The job, then, of eco-sensitive landscape architects and designers becomes to “blend, nestle and synthesize what the client wants to do
with preservation.” At the two-year-old home of Chris and Peggy Ettel on the shore of brackish Crystal Lake in Virginia Beach, that was a matter of allowing Peggy drifts and mass plantings of her beloved blooming plants but with buffer restoration. The Ettels had purchased two lots with a house straddling both. They tore down that home, sold one lot, and built on the other. Their resulting 75 feet of shoreline was a Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area (CBPA) and, therefore, subject to a set of measures designed to protect the adjacent body of water from harm due to land disturbing activities and contaminated water runoff. As a partner in VB Homes, this was not Chris’s first CBPA rodeo, so he was quite familiar with the multi-step planning and approval process. In their case, this involved a collaboration with WPL landscape designer Emily Rothrock, as they worked with the CBPA staff in advance of appearing before the board. The Ettels put their heads together with Rothrock on a buffer restoration project designed to “mitigate water runoff by absorbing water and slowing down bank erosion.” This required a 100-foot-wide riparian buffer, which replaces turf and also serves a bioretention or filtering function of sediments, nutrients, and potentially harmful substances. On the Ettel property, the buffer zone stretches between a raised bulkhead and the home. Explains Rothrock, “The beds are exca-
vated to a certain depth and refilled with soil and amendments that allow water to run through quicker” to counter the effects of impervious cover such as driveways and pools. Then the beds are planted—here with an emphasis on a low maintenance evergreen foundation, native plants, color, texture and some privacy—and mulched with a shredded organic medium. The goal is to mirror the three trophic layers of a maritime forest: canopy trees, understory plantings, and ground cover, each with its own protective function.
Restored shoreline in the Little Neck area of Virginia Beach.
Now we look at things differently. —Darcy Stephan Other properties present owners with different challenges. For Darcy and Brooks Stephan, who own seven acres and have restored 80 feet of shoreline in the Little Neck area of Virginia Beach, living shoreline restoration was the answer to their serious erosion issues. Plus, it came with the added
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benefit of pollutant filtering and the creation of fish and wildlife habitats. Sporting the first such shoreline in Virginia Beach, Darcy is quick to give credit to Lynnhaven River Now, dubbing them the experts and stressing their critical role. “We could not have done it without Lynnhaven River Now,” she insists. But she also credits wetlands scientist and living shoreline “guru” Kevin Du Bois of Norfolk with getting the couple to “drink the Kool-Aid” following an educational presentation, and Jim Cahoon, an environmental professional and owner of Bay Environmental, Inc., in Chesapeake, with the design. Noting that there are different kinds of living shorelines, Darcy explains that the Stephans’ 2012 project began with the construction of an actual sandy shore before planting. Ten to 12-foot coconut fiber logs, aka coir logs, went down first at the lowest elevation to define a new perimeter. Then sand, barged in from Portsmouth by marine contractors Hodges & Hodges Enterprises—to whom Darcy refers as “Magic Men”—was deposited and graded over the course of two days. Next came the planting of 2,100 plant plugs at about 50 cents each from Nature Scapes in Suffolk, a job that the homeowners undertook themselves with help from Darcy’s sister and brother-in-law. From lowest to highest, the plants include spartina alterniflora, spartina patens, seaside goldenrods, switchgrass, hibiscus, baccharis and iva.
Other than lots of tree pruning—these marsh grasses require sun to thrive—the Stephans’ living shoreline requires little maintenance and is estimated to have cost about the same as bulkheading.
It was the right thing to do.
“scouring away at the shoreline.” In this case, a breakwater was constructed from a series of cone-shaped stacks of “huge rocks” by Riverworks. (Though owner Bob Winstead is now semi-retired, he still works with Jeff Watkins of Shoreline Structures, a marine contractor in Gloucester.) Sand was then deposited and graded between the breakwater and existing shoreline where two types of spartina were planted to create a dynamic and healthy shoreline that is monitored twice each year by the Poquoson Wetlands Board. With erosion stopped in its tracks and sedimentation helping to create new marsh, Bronwyn would encourage anyone to follow in their footsteps. I will water for three to four months, but then they have to survive. —Vickie Greene
—Bronwyn Evans
A couple of years prior, in Poquoson, Bronwyn Evans and her sister and brotherin-law, Drs. Anne Evans and Richard Byles, who live next door, had reached the same conclusion also following a seminar some years prior. Having built an eco-friendly solar energy home on property that her parents had purchased in the 1970s, Bronwyn was concerned with protecting the shoreline which was “washing away and breaking up the marsh.” Located near where the Poquoson River feeds into the Chesapeake Bay, the “fetch” of the wind-driven waves was
From her acre of brackish saltmarsh on Bell’s Mill Creek in Chesapeake’s Great Bridge area, Vickie Greene laughingly laments “a long history of failed experiments” in this “disturbed wetland” she has shared with her continued on page 14 >
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Greenbeats
Grants for Plants
With Help From askHRgreen.org, Youth Groups Improve The Environment And Their Education | By Kristen De Deyn Kirk
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my Henry, health and wellness program director at Newport News Family YMCA and a naturalist with Virginia Master Naturalist Historic Southside Chapter, is all about improving people and the environment. So when Boy Scout David Wells approached her last year about a win-win project to earn his Eagle Scout award, she immediately said yes. Then she applied for a mini-grant from askHRgreen.org. The environmental organization awarded her funds in the spring, and she and David started working. In a few weeks, their plans to create four gardens near the Y’s water spray park bloomed. David secured donations of building supplies, recruited three fellow Boys Scouts to build garden boxes and enlisted his family: Mom Deidre Wells and sister Mary Amelia, both from Girl Scout Troop 1539, who were tasked with plant duty. “David knew we wanted gardens. We’re right on the James River,” Henry says. “The plants filter our grounds’ water before it heads to the river. The environment is improved. We use the gardens to educate members in our preschool and camp programs, and people relax near the gardens. Relaxing is part of wellness.” Mary Amelia and 11 other Girl Scouts used the grant funds to purchase plants. They chose
to design four gardens—one edible; one sensory; one visual and sensory to attract butterflies; and one with a mixture of plants from the other three gardens. “The girls talked to the staff at a greenhouse and thought about each purchase,” Henry
says. “They were surprised when a zucchini grew. That wasn’t one of their intended purchases! It was such a hit that the girls want more for next year.” The troop created educational materials about each plant that they did select and explained why they made the selections. Henry hopes to create additional materials to educate the Y’s camp participants and preschool students further. The preschoolers helped maintain the gardens last year
Energetic About Energy Hey Virginians, it’s about time to mellow out a bit. Gov. Terry McAuliffe says we are using way too much energy, and he’s on a mission to fast track the commonwealth’s energy plan. In May 2015 the governor announced a new goal to reduce energy consumption by 10 percent by 2020—two years earlier than the previous target published in 2014’s Virginia Energy Plan. We say, thank goodness. According to the most recent figures by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), Virginia ranks 35th in efficiency measures and policies in the country. McAuliffe appointed 12 people from the public and private sectors to an Executive Committee on Energy Efficiency. In 2015 he announced the establishment of the Virginia Solar Energy Development Authority to facilitate, coordinate and support the development of the solar energy industry and solar-powered electric energy facilities in the commonwealth. This initiative came a few weeks after the state issued the final permit for a huge solar energy project in Accomack County—the first of its kind in Virginia. For simple tips on what you can do in your own home and at work to reduce energy consumption—only turning on lights you need, replacing furnace filters monthly, etc.—visit VirginiaEnergySense.org. Make sure to sign up for the 10% Challenge and pledge your commitment to helping Virginia meet its goals. —Melissa M. Stewart
and will continue to do so in the spring. The garden design process had started with Bob Vasquez, a Virginia Master Naturalist with the Peninsula Chapter. He met with the girls several times. They each created a journal with their drawings of the spray park and layout ideas. “We really explored the area. The girls learned about the plants and the wildlife there, and they asked a lot questions. They were so inquisitive,” Henry says. Each step of the project, Henry considered the girls’ SOLs objectives and noted how their involvement helped them develop math, science and language skills. The girls certainly gained a lot from creating the garden, as many students have from similar projects, thanks to askHRgreen.org. Their minigrants, which provide up to $500 for educators and organizations working with children to improve the environment, impacted 6,985 students during the group’s 2014–2015 fiscal year. Educators can apply for a grant at anytime. Applications are accepted year-round as long as funding is available. A committee reviews applications monthly, and they respond to each submission within 30 days. Details on the types of projects that they often approve are available at askHRgreen. org/Mini-Grant-Program.
Beyond The Bin Do you have plans for some serious spring cleaning? It’s the time of year when many of us purge old, unused items, declutter and get a fresh, reorganized start in our homes. This year, please think beyond your recycle bin when it comes to cleaning out your closet, garage or attic. The City of Virginia Beach Landfill and Resource Recovery Center has received national and state-wide recognition for its efforts rebranding the facility and for industry excellence. Items that can be placed in residents’ blue bins for curbside pickup are also accepted at the Recycling Drop-Off Center if you are looking to do a lot of recycling. The Resource Recovery Center accepts yard debris, electronics, plastic bags, batteries and much more. They also accept donations of clothing, shoes, books and other household items. For a complete list of accepted waste, visit VBGov.com/Landfill. In Newport News, the city operates a residential waste drop-off and composting facility that accepts all the regular recyclables along with an unlimited amount of brush and non-contaminated soil, dirt, concrete and brick. Visit NNGov. com/948/Residential-Recycling-Program-Information to learn more. The idea is to make recycling as easy as it can be so less and less discards end up in the landfill. Be sure to check into the options in your own city, and consider one of many convenient area donations centers—Goodwill, CHKD Thrift Stores, The Salvation Army, etc.—for clothing, furniture and appliances. Never forget the old saying that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. —Melissa M. Stewart
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Greenbeats
Leaving Their Mark girl scout troop 22 joins the clean community commission storm drain marker project | By Kristen De Deyn Kirk
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irginia Beach ninth grader Samantha Kromkowski might always remember Memorial Day weekend 2015. Instead of hanging out at the beach every day like most teenagers, she searched for storm drains. Why would a fun-loving teenager do that? “She worked on the [Girl Scout Silver Award] project for 28 hours that weekend,” explains Carol Kromkowski, Samantha’s mom and Girl Scout Troop 22’s leader. “Some of the other troop members rotated in and out helping her, finishing up their hours for the award. For them, it was fun!” The troop selected the City of Virginia Beach’s Clean Community Commission Storm Drain Marker Project as their Silver Award project, which requires each awardee to complete 50 hours on one project. Tanya Ford from the City of Virginia Beach and Jody Ullman from Lynnhaven River Now helped with background information and shared the location of more than 1,000 storm drains.
“The girls received locations in neighborhoods from Shore Drive to Inlynnview,” Carol notes. “They found each drain—sometimes they removed leaves or contacted the city to let them know the drain needed cleaning—and glued on markers.” Each marker features a dolphin or a fish and notes where— Lynnhaven River, Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Ocean and other locations—the storm drain releases. The visual reminder can stop residents from dumping unwanted items on streets and in the drains. “You shouldn’t put anything down or near the drain that could hurt a dolphin, which is just about everything,” Carol says. According to the City of Virginia Beach website, a study showed that 50 percent of the pollution in the Chesapeake Bay is due to storm water runoff. Water from streets picks up litter, motor oil, fertilizers and other pollutants. Troop 22 shared their experience with two other troops. They met one troop in a shopping center parking lot to teach the girls about the drains and how to adhere the markers. They also produced a flier and pamphlet about the program. “The girls really worked together and accomplished a lot in a short time [of about a month],” Carol says. “The city has asked if they’re interested in training other groups, too.”
Earn A Green Star If you’re committed to living green in your home—composting, conserving water and energy, planting native species in the backyard—it’s time to take your dedication to ensuring a cleaner and healthier Chesapeake Bay one step further by signing up to become a Bay Star Home. The program, which originated in the City of Norfolk, is now open to all citizens in Coastal Virginia through the region-wide askHRgreen.org public awareness and education campaign. To enroll, visit askHRgreen.org/BayStarHomes, and pledge to practice at least eight environmentally-friendly behaviors in your home and yard that will have a lasting impact on the waterways. “It takes a community of individuals making small changes to protect our waterways and restore their vitality,” says Katie Cullipher, askHRgreen.org team leader. “Bay Star Homes is just one way to ensure we each protect the region’s most defining resource—water.” After signing up online, Bay Star Home participants will receive a welcome packet full of green tips and information and may also become eligible for additional environmental offerings from city or county programs. Program offerings vary by locality, but all participants will be recognized with a Bay Star Homes garden flag. So far nearly 2,400 Coastal Virginians have joined the program. Options to fit every type of resident—homeowners, renters, apartment-dwellers and those living in the suburbs or on rural farms—prove it is easy being green and committing to a cleaner, healthier Bay. To learn more about Bay Star Homes or to register your home for the program, visit askHRgreen.org/BayStarHomes. —Melissa M. Stewart
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Donna Iona Drozda, “Coppice”
Wade Mickley, “Feral”
Eco-Artists at Work local creators make a statement using repurposed goods and environmental themes | By Betsy DiJulio
A Scott Roberts, “Hut In The Sky”
“I watched the forest leave on the back of a flatbed truck.” —Donna Iona Drozda
s goes the community, so go the artists. The artist community in Coastal Virginia, as elsewhere, is a microcosm of the larger population, including its diverse attitudes toward topics like sustainability. The four artists profiled here could scarcely be more different, including the role that eco issues play in their studio practices. Take, for instance, Donna Iona Drozda of Virginia Beach. Long known for her affinity for the natural world, her focus was decidedly sharpened when her partner, Brenda Davidson (“BD”), quite literally bought the farm. A
tree farm. Fondly known as “The Lab,” these 50 acres in Buckingham County’s Appomattox Court House had just been clear cut prior to BD’s purchase in December 2009. As Drozda explains, for about a week each month—from the comfort of their cabin and her small works studio—the pair lives off the grid. From their vantage point, they have an opportunity “to watch how the land repairs itself after being brutalized.” The first year, she describes, “the grasses come up because the sunlight can get it.” And with the grasses come songbirds. Hence the farm’s real name, “Bluebird Gulch.” Each successive
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year brings “tremendous amounts of life everywhere,” including bear, coyotes, deer, fox, toads, lizards and much more. Drozda’s series Roots and Wings and Virginia Birds are responses to the simplicity and beauty of nature on their piece of property where “we just let happen what happens,” with very little intervention. She sees this rebirth as a metaphor for how we can get “chopped down in life” but how we can “coppice” ourselves. (Coppiced timber is that which is cut back to ground level to stimulate growth.) As the land “keeps moving in the direction of fully functioning on its own terms,” Drozda records the process through paintings, media blend collages and textile arts. Rarely literal, her work is often referential, but even when it is highly abstract, the very process itself echoes this “leaving and coming back” through layering and other additive and subtractive techniques.
For his part, Scott Roberts, artist, graphic designer, musician, stay-at-home dad and lacrosse referee, has most recently been focusing on pyrography. Burning images into wood panels—an estimated 30 percent of which are repurposed (broken surfboards, upcycled skateboard decks and “stuff” with a history destined for the landfill)—Roberts tends to dwell artistically between his own interests, e.g. surfing and whitewater kayaking, and the environment. His frames, usually made of disassembled pallets, are 100 percent recycled. Recruited by Virginia Wesleyan College from Denver to play lacrosse, Roberts graduated with a degree in fine art, went home for a year, but returned to Coastal Virginia about six years ago because the pull of the waves was too strong. Conscious of his carbon footprint—he and Sam Hundley, “Jewish Giant” his wife own only one car, and he and his daughter bike to the library, the beach and the park—he sometimes makes personal-political statements about such issues as seismic blasting and offshore drilling through his artwork. In the end, his artistic choices are a balance of aesthetics and environmental ethics, a response in part to our disposable society.
Meanwhile, in his loft and garage in Newport News, Wade Mickley—when not working at NASA as a graphic designer—
is kayaking or paddle boarding and scavenging for artifacts washed up on the beach at low tide. Though Mickley studied art formally, he was always “collecting stuff on the side” and decided to do what he really loved, which was to “build things out of my sketchbook,” recently earning him “Best in Show” in VA Artists 2015. His colorful, quirky and dynamic assemblages are crafted out of vinyl records, carved wood, found objects, old rusted vintage toys and the like. Though he describes himself as “environmentally conscious,” anything is fair game for subject matter. Still, “always looking and reading,” subjects like honey bees and colony collapse, whales and whaling, earth science and environmental topics that arise from his editorial illustration work with Blue Ridge Outdoors are not uncommon. Largely influenced by illustrators, graphic novelists and other fine artists, his work, filtered through what he describes as “me and my anxieties,” is never about one thing.
Claiming not to be an environmentalist “by any means,” Sam Hundley’s middle name could be “Repurpose.” A professional illustrator/designer for The Virginian-Pilot, but with a national portfolio since Look What I Found, his pop-up exhibition at the Monticello Arcade some three years ago, and his acquisition of studio space at Fawn Street Studios in Norfolk, Hundley has quickly become just as widely known as an American Scrap Artist. Political, clever and most often figurative, his constructions make magic out of the mundane. Collecting from the side of the road or, more frequently now from L. Chenman Scrap Metal Yard in Norfolk, the artist finds something “kind of mystical about the scrap yard” where his mind starts free associating in a kind of “drug-free hallucination.” Seeing “beauty in trash,” Hundley describes his process as drawing with these found objects, this junk. Though whatever is currently occupying his mind directs his process—“If I’m thinking about Donald Trump, I’ll see a flat piece of red wood and think, ‘That looks like Donald Trump’s hair,’”—it is most satisfying for Hundley when, once finished, a piece reveals a deeper, previously unconscious, meaning.
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Locavore
Going
perspectives on farm-to-table food culture in coastal virginia | By Beth Hester Peanuts, Pork and Blue Crabs
T
he locavore moveOur ment is alive and Experts: well across our Jake and Amanda commonwealth. Browder: farmers Virginia is recand owners ognized as an of Browder’s emerging leader in Fresh Pickins, the nation’s local food movement. Smithfield Here in greater Coastal Virginia, we have an abundance of safe, fresh Stacia Childers seafood gleaned from inland and and Luis coastal waters. The quality of local, Echevarria: small micro-produced artisanal pork farmers and products rivals the famed hams owners of La and charcuterie of our European Caridad Farm, counterparts, and our legendary Parksley, Eastern peanuts are shipped to snack aficioShore nados around the globe. No matter the time of year, something always Sydney Meers: seems to be growing: from strawchef, artist, berries in the springtime to collards auteur, good and kale after first frost. Farm marfood evangelist kets and cooperatives are popping and owner up everywhere, an indication of a of Stove, The healthy, growing food culture. Restaurant, Yet local chefs, foodies and Portsmouth. farmers agree that the basis for establishing a truly sustainable food Randy and culture goes well beyond the enjoyBrian Pack: ment and promotion of regional communications/ food specialties. It involves a certain marketing mindfulness, a daily round of delibdirector and erate decisions designed to make chef of familyfood the basis for creating commuowned Smithfield nity. It requires that we look to local Station, producers to supply at least some of Smithfield our groceries. Eating local is good for our health, good for the environment and good for business. But what constitutes a food culture? How can adopting a locavore attitude help protect our environment, encourage ethical animal husbandry methods and nourish both our bodies and our local economy? To gain perspective on each of these categories of inquiry, we reached out to a sampling of local community experts who shared their views on food culture in Coastal Virginia.
“Food cultures concentrate a population’s collective wisdom about the plants and animals that grow in a place and the complex ways of rendering them tasty. These are the mores of survival, good health, and control of excess. Living without such a culture would seem dangerous.” —Barbara Kingsolver: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
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Sydney Meers
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Why Eat Locally? It’s Good for Animals and the Environment How far your food has to travel has serious consequences for the environment. On average, each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled approximately 1,500 miles and contains, on average, ingredients from at least five countries. Transportation on such a grand scale requires expending massive, polluting, fossil fuel energies. According to researchers at the Worldwatch Institute: “we are spending more energy to get the food to the table than we receive from actually eating the food.” By contrast, independent, community-serving businesses are people-sized. Small, local producers are a part of their communities and feel invested in them. They generally use less wasteful packaging and are more inclined to practice sustainable and humane agricultural practices. Importantly, they’ll welcome visitors and school groups endeavoring to pass on farm culture knowledge to the next generation. Stacia and Luis: “Living on the Shore, we are reminded why we started La Caridad Farm every time we pass a truck full of chickens bound for the processing plants. That’s why I was a vegetarian for 11 years. When I began eating meat again, I had to know that the animal died with care and respect. Ten years ago, the only way to achieve that was to raise the animals ourselves.” Sydney: “I intentionally look for heirloom vegetables and meat from heritage breeds to promote breed diversity. I want my meats and sausages to come from the best breeds that meet my needs. I don’t want a factoryspec pig. It’s not good for the pig and not good for my customers. As far as ‘locavorism’ goes, I think we’ve moved beyond ‘farm-to-table’ as a trend. I hate trends. But if that’s what it took for a trend to become a serious, fully-fledged movement that has gotten us where we are today, then so be it. We’re finally catching on.” It’s Good for Your Body It’s not only fossil fuel expenditures that influence our health. Fruits and veggies that are shipped from afar are often picked before they have a chance to fully ripen and absorb valuable nutrients from the soil. Sometimes the food is ‘gassed’ and artificially ripened, which affects flavor. And in the case of seafood, especially shellfish, safety is a major concern. Knowing your local producers gives you some control over the way in which the food was grown and harvested. Sydney: “I have a responsibility when I feed people. I want to serve people good, clean, fresh, flavorful, healthy foods. No GMOs. If I’m serving corn grits, I wants those grits to actually taste like corn. I try to buy as much as I can from local producers. In my own backyard I raise bees and grow a variety of herbs and vegetables including okra, peppers and squash. It all gets used at Stove and in my handcrafted sauces. Plus, the bees benefit other gardeners in my neighborhood. I save the seeds and share them with others. I love heirloom vegetables. I use a squash that is one of the world’s oldest varieties still in existence.”
Randy and Brian: “When you’re dealing with seafood, knowledge of local waters is key in terms of safety. Personal relationships forged over long periods of time with local seafood suppliers, like Johnson & Sons out of Eclipse, enable us to pick the ‘best of the best’ for our customers. Some of the smaller providers may sell to only three or four restaurants. Our goal is always quality over quantity. In the seafood game, especially with oysters, we look for suppliers who are insured, who know their product and who handle their seafood using best practices.” It’s Good for the Economy According to the American Independent Business Alliance, each dollar you spend at a locally-owned, independent business returns three times more money to the local economy than a dollar spent at a chain. In Coastal Virginia, $384.2 million dollars would be injected into our local economy if each one of us spent just $10 a week on local food. Randy and Randy and Brian: “We are always Brian Pack touched by how much people care about what they produce. They pour their hearts and souls into their products. Buying local isn’t a trend for us; it’s just always how our family has done business from day one. Restaurants are not functioning optimally when they’re run from some distant corporate headquarters. Some large restaurant suppliers with whom we deal often have some sort of ‘farm-to-table’ program, but it’s just not the same. We prefer whenever possible to build food relationships within our own community and support local producers.” Sydney: “Farming and working seafood boats is hard damn work. I love going out on the boats or helping out at a local farm. It’s an exchange of knowledge and local foodways. Sometimes it’s near impossible to source absolutely everything I need from our specific area. However, on the occasions when I do have to go outside our region, I intentionally seek out quality products that have been sustainably raised or grown by small-scale, family farmers.” It’s Good for the Spirit: Building Community and Finding Inspiration Amanda Browder: “Many of our farm market customers are passionate home cooks. They’re strong believers in the local foods movement and its many benefits. Over the years, we’ve built great reciprocal relationships with them, and they often share their cooking tips with us in exchange for ‘how-to’ growing advice. Jake and I are incredibly thankful for them; their patronage provides our family with the opportunity to farm and lead a healthy lifestyle. Our children understand where their food comes from. They enjoy growing things and getting their hands dirty in the soil right along with us.” Stacia and Luis: “Though our volume right now is small, we seem to have found a niche within the Hispanic community here on the Eastern Shore. There’s a desire for fresh, non-processed, non-industrial foods. ‘De rancho,’ or farm-raised meat, is familiar to them and is considered to be of better quality. They buy and use the whole pig, rendering the lard, making chicharrones, and using the intestines for sausage casings. There is very little waste. There is an intimate and direct connection with our food that we want to capture for ourselves and others.”
Locavore 101 CSA (Community Supported Agriculture): a convenient way for people to buy seasonal foods directly from local farmers and producers. Consumers purchase a membership subscription and in return receive a box full of fresh, seasonal produce each week throughout the growing season. Box contents can vary each week and may contain meats, vegetables, flowers, herbs, eggs and homemade bread. A CSA membership is a great way to inject new life into old recipes by trying unusual or heirloom varieties of foods not available in chain groceries. BuyLocalHamptonRoads.org Organic: The US Department of Agriculture defines the term ‘organic’ as food that is produced using sustainable agricultural production practices. Not permitted are most conventional pesticides, fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge, bioengineering or ionizing radiation. Organic meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. The USDA National Organic Program website has more information, including inspection and certification information: AMS. USDA.gov/About-AMS/ProgramsOffices/National-Organic-Program Free-Range vs. Pastured: Though either method of raising animals is better than those used by industrial, factory farms, the folks at Mother Earth News acknowledge that some producers abuse the term ‘free range.’ Look for true ‘pastured’ or ‘grass-fed’ animals. Check out this great website for a primer on decoding the egg carton: MotherEarthNews.com/ Homesteading-And-Livestock Certified Humane: The Certified Humane Raised and Handled® label on meat, chicken, pork, eggs, pet food or dairy products means that the food comes from farms where Humane Farm Animal Care’s precise, objective standards for the humane treatment of farm animals are implemented: CertifiedHumane.org The Buy Fresh, Buy Local Food Guide: A respected information destination for all things locavore in Coastal Virginia. Online or in print form, this is a must-have reference: BuyLocalHamptonRoads.org
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husband, Sam Selden, and children for 20 years, children who, more than once, have been sent out in waders to bring back raised beds, floating away in flood waters. With a serious invasive exotics problem and, like many wetlands, illegal dumping issues, Greene has battled Phragmites australis and piles of construction debris in the form of toilets and mattress springs. But she has also harvested bricks to use in combination with sand in the building of planting berms. A Master Gardener and Chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Board for the City of Chesapeake, one of Greene’s greatest teachers has been “painful personal experience” as she has learned what will and won’t grow in the “muck,” her term for the lower elevations of her yard, as well as at the medium and higher ones. Fortunately, she’s an admitted plant sale and clearance junkie, so what doesn’t work hasn’t broken the bank. “I buy a lot of stuff and see what survives the brackish water floods.” Here, culled from her extensive mental roster of plants that have thrived in the various challenging conditions in her yard— which floods three to five times each year— are a few of her favorites with her notes: clethra (lower bog bed/barrier garden); crinum lily (wet or dry, shade or sun; doesn’t mind wet feet; won’t bloom for 3 years); a variety of ferns (don’t mind medium-wet areas); figs, pomegranates, and native grapes like muscadines and scuppernongs (grow in middle
elevation); heather and rosemary (don’t mind overwash); liriope (non-native, but will grow in muck); muhly grass (native; doesn’t like sitting in water; fine with occasional overwash); paper bush (medium elevation with overwash once or twice a year; doesn’t like wet feet; unusual bark interest; a little pricey but spectacular); and weeping bald cypress (lower bog bed/barrier garden). A bountiful butterfly garden in Chesapeake.
I open the door and let them fly. —Nadine Scott On two acres of drier land in the Hickory section of Chesapeake, fellow Master Gardener Nadine Scott and her husband, Walter, have transformed what is best described as a “field” in the front part of their property into a songbird’s paradise of grapevines, shrubs and trees—with very little turf—such
as cedar, hackberry, long needle pine, pear, pecan, tulip poplar, wild cherry, and willow. Nearer the house, that paradise belongs to butterflies. With host plants like milkweed for monarchs and parsley, fennel, dill and rue for swallowtails, plus caterpillar cages first on her porch and then in a screened room under the deck, an invitation to one of Scott’s butterfly releases is special indeed. Limiting her use of fertilizers and pesticides, planting the “right plant in the right place,” and mulching with her own leaves and a top dressing of pine straw from their property complements Scott’s concern with habitat destruction.
A farm table constructed from barn wood, and old shutters for fencing enhance Cindy Pennybacker’s Virginia Beach backyard.
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It’s not very “green” if it doesn’t last. —Cindy Pennybacker When your thoughts turn to the more decorative aspects of your outdoor spaces, take your cue from Cindy Pennybacker, owner of Chartreuse Interiors in Virginia Beach, where this designer has made high-style reclamation and repurposing her specialty. Walking the walk in her own backyard, Pennybacker’s guests gather around a farm table constructed from 150-year-old barn wood whose legs are made from Eastern Shore barn beams. Seating is in mismatched chairs. Desiring some privacy, the designer continued in this vein by flanking her arbor-style entrance to her backyard living space with tall narrow shutters instead of traditional fencing. “They too have lived many years, enduring the elements,” she notes of these appealingly worn and patinaed shutters painted in varying tones of green.
Principles for Water-Wise Landscaping Plan Map out areas of your yard based on characteristics such as sun exposure, moisture level and soil characteristics. Group plants with similar water needs together in compatible zones.
Irrigate Efficiently Know how much water your plants require and match your irrigation system to these needs to avoid waste. Use a rain gauge to account for rainfall and avoid overwatering.
Improve the Soil Good soil absorbs and holds moisture better and encourages deeper roots.
Mulch The sunblock for plant roots 2 to 4 inches retains moisture, slows evaporation, protects roots from overheating and reduces or eliminates weeds.
Be Practical with Turf Reduce dependence on turf. Grass generally requires a lot of water as well as fertilizers, herbicides and fungicides that often end up in our waterways. Choose a water-conserving, warm-season turf grass such as centipede, zoysia or Bermuda (the most drought-tolerant but will brown-out in winter, so use other plants to enhance the appearance of your landscape year-round).
Pennybacker stresses the importance of choosing wood—preferably local—that has been seasoned already, “that has stood the test of time.” Teak and cedar, she notes, are ideal choices because they won’t deteriorate. “When constructing furniture from reclaimed wood you’re often forced to saw and sand, exposing the unseasoned interior. It’s imperative to use protective finishes over all surfaces when using a wood that can deteriorate,” she cautions. “It’s not very ‘green’ if it doesn’t last.” Regardless of context and resources, including budget, we homeowners here in Coastal Virginia have at our salty fingertips an ocean of options for living a little greener in our outdoor spaces. Whether we are making baby steps or giant leaps toward walking a little softer on this precious sandy soil, we would be wise to remember that from biodiversity, to recreation, to migration, transportation, food supply, and commerce, the vital importance of the Chesapeake Bay to this region—with ripples, literally, stretching around the globe—would be difficult to underestimate.
Choose Low Water-Use Plants Look especially for native plants which consider Coastal Virginia to be an ideal growing climate. Maintain Appropriately Follow pruning and mowing guidelines.
What Do You Know About H2O?
T
he experts at askHRgreen.org field lots of environmental questions when out and about in the community. Their knowledge and expertise covers topics ranging from what’s recyclable to fertilizing tips to hazardous waste and everything in between. Recently, they hit the streets and asked Coastal Virginia residents a few questions of their own to find out how much citizens know about local tap water. The experience is documented in their “What Do You Know?” video series available online. “There was a wide range of responses, but when the real answers were revealed, many people were pleasantly surprised,” says Katie Cullipher, an askHRgreen.org team leader. “For instance, a gallon of tap water costs less than one penny. When you compare that to other household bills, such as your monthly cell phone fee or cable TV subscription, you realize how affordable tap water really is.” Most people don’t often stop to consider the true value of tap water, but it plays an important role in everyday lives. Tap water helps to safeguard public health, support the economy, protect against the threat of fire and maintain the overall quality of life that citizens enjoy in Coastal Virginia. And it’s available from faucets 24/7/365 thanks to the more than 6,500 miles of pipeline that stretch across the region. So how many gallons of water do Coastal Virginia residents use as a region in one day? And how many gallons of tap water does the average person use? Those were two of the questions posed in the “What Do You Know” video series. Test your knowledge against other residents, and find the answers by tuning in at askHRgreen.org/know-video-series.
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