Soil Health – The Convergence

Go Underground: Grow Mushrooms

Convergence Program — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 16:00:51 +0000

Understanding the ecology of mushrooms and how to integrate desired mushrooms into gardens.

Anyone can grow mushrooms for food or for a local market. Learn to grow mushrooms as a food to enhance health, recycle organic materials on site and as a cash crop. This workshop will present several choices of mushrooms that are suited to these uses, including Hen of the Woods, King Stropharia, Oyster Mushroom, Turkey Tail Mushroom and Shitake Mushroom. We will discuss several methods for growing these using local organic waste products.

Presented By: Theresa Halula

Building Healthy Soil Communities with Bioactive Compost

Joshua Angelo Silva — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 21:06:05 +0000

Join the BEAM TEAM supports the research of NMSU microbiologist David C. Johnson, a microbiologist at NMSU and Director of the Institute for Sustainable Agricultural Research, who began seven years ago to investigate compost, seeking to understand its most essential attributes. His discovery that microbial diversity and density are the primary factors in healthy soil and effective carbon sequestration, led David and his wife, Hui Chen, to developed a no-turn composting bio-reactor that makes fungi-rich compost that can be used as a soil and seed inoculant. Results of using BEAM (Bioactive Environmental Agricultural Management.) on test plots and farms have surpassed all conventional expectations for both soil productivity and J carbon sequestration. Our workshop, presented by the Regenerative Agriculture Group of 350 Sonoma, will offer a summary presentation of Dr. Johnson’s research and discuss how to build and maintain a bioreactor and join the BEAM team, a group of farmers, ranchers, grape growers, orchardists and gardeners who are organizing to do test plots to assess BEAM’s effectiveness in a variety of growing situations and climates.

BEAM is an addition to our understanding and potential use of compost and, more importantly, to our relationship with the teeming natural world under our feet that is our source of life on this planet. It is meant to be used with permaculture practices such as no till, companion planting and ground cover. Our 350 group, concerned primarily with climate change, collaborated with Farmer’s Guild and CAFF to bring Dr. Johnson to Healdsburg SHED last April.

Friday Oct 6| 5pm| Willow Grove

Presented By: Anne Jacopetti

Anne Jacopetti

Joshua Angelo Silva — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 20:54:33 +0000

Anne is a retired Waldorf teacher and educator and author of “What Are We Going to Learn Today?”, a memoir and inquiry that stresses among other basics the importance of the natural world and wilderness is the development of healthy children. Anne is on the steering committee of 350 Sonoma and started a Regenerative Agriculture group several years ago after attending the Soil Not Oil conference in Richmond. A devoted learner, she is excited to share what she is learning about soil, life and our place in this biosphere.

2017 Workshop:

Building Healthy Soil Communities with Bioactive Compost

Colleen Dick

Michael Lott — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 20:22:57 +0000

[image_frame align=”left” height=”300″ width=”300″ prettyphoto=”false”][/image_frame]

After several decades of nutrition consultation, the obvious truth that food is only as healthy as the soil in which it is grown settled upon Colleen, and her search for solutions has led to her joining with Onchenda Open Global Food Cooperative.

Her previous work has been with individuals, healthcare professionals, fitness centers, and corporations to improve health and nutrition awareness. She believes that vibrant health and fitness, as well as resistance to disease, may be facilitated through the habits of eating a well-balanced, whole food diet, the judicious use of supplements, getting adequate exercise, personal and social vigor.

Colleen has Completed the”Food as Medicine” course sponsored by Georgetown University Medical School and the Center for Mind-Body Medicine (2008)

2016 RED Talk Presentation: Structures: A Cooperative Model for Local Food Production & Distribution