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It seemed like every time that I turned on the television, the news media was always
reporting on the same problems in the world. They would report on America's healthcare
crisis. Where 1 in 3 are obese, and 1 in 10 have diabetes. Or glaciers melting from environmental
pollution. I was tired of hearing about the same problems
year after year, after year. So I decided, I wanted to find the people who were taking
action so improve either their personal health, or the health of our environment.
I started my quest by interviewing doctors about obesity. I wanted to better understand
the problem. How big is the obesity problem in America?
It's really big. So the obesity problem in America is absolutely
getting worse. And it's been heading in that direction for a number of years.
I think the obesity problem in America, as much as I'd like to think it's getting better,
is at best plateauing. So how does America's obesity problem compare
to the rest of the world? According to the Central Intelligence Agency world fact book,
34% of Americans are obese. And in China, only 3% of their population is obese.
You know the diets that we're living, the stressed out lifestyles we're living, the
electronic lifestyles we're living, the lack of exercise, are the causes of the modern
chronic diseases. I think the role of food in obesity as well
as acute and chronic disease, is key. I think it's probably the most important thing.
And if we don't look at that and we don't start changing it, we're number one everything
goes back to economy. We're going to go bankrupt. In 2008, medical spending attributed to obesity,
was $147 billion. But second of all, and even more important
is people lives is we're going to die younger. The next generation is thought to be maybe
the first generation that won't live as long as their parents did.
300,000 Americans die each year from obesity. So much attention is being paid to obesity
around our country, so much funding from National Institutes of Health and other research organizations
are going toward obesity research, to try to figure out how to best deal with this problem
in our country. So it's a huge issue for our nation. Some people even argue that it is
a national security issue. There are definitely people on the military side of our society
who want to see our population more fit. National government has actually done you
know evaluations even for the military. Of our national defense concerns for our obesity
epidemic in this country. That document exists, and it's one public knowledge and I've actually
you know downloaded it off the internet. So that does exist and our government and our
country is very aware, and our medical institutions, you know the American Medical Association,
the American Osteopathic Association are very very very concerned about the obesity epidemic
that's out there. When I see somebody who is obese, or has a
problem with fat metabolism, I'm not so concerned that "oh well you know you're getting fat
and we have to do something because you're getting fat, or that you are fat." My concern
is what is your body telling you and me about what's going on internally. It's saying that
you are not getting something. So if your food doesn't have the nutrients that your
body needs, why wouldn't you be hungry? You are hungry. So eat move stuff. But the stuff
you eat still doesn't have the nutrients. I wanted to learn more about the challenges
of being overweight. So I met with Jessica who was about to start a 12 week program for
better health. No everybody who's overweight is living this
life of like gluttony. That's not always the case. So I think people make a lot of assumptions
and judgements about you, and treat you very different when you're not that model picture
of a woman. Are you at a greater risk for a heart attack
right now? I would assume. I do have high blood pressure
and know that the first time I every saw that on a paper, no doctor had called me that,
and I looked at papers at the doctors office and saw morbid obesity, I was horrified. Because
I never would of classified myself that way. But diabetes is a higher risk. The risks are
the longer I keep this weight on the higher the chances are of me getting, I mean even
cancer has been linked to be obese. So I just said I need to be around for my kids.
I don't know of a study but anecdotally we see that there is an awful lot of obesity
associated with women who have breast cancer. so the consequences of obesity are future
health risks. So we worry about a number of different things when someone is gaining weight
to rapidly. We worry about heart health, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, we worry about
diabetes, sleep apnea which is when you have pause in your respiration during sleep. There
is a myriad of other issues. There is a very strong relationship also between obesity and
cancer risk. I think the health crisis in America definitely
relates to obesity. But obesity isn't the problem, obesity is the symptom and the sign.
So obesity is what happens from everything else that's going on. So related to obesity
and if you go backwards, and look at obesity as a result of problems relating to insulin,
and high circulating insulin, then you can look at the fact that that so many tumors
have insulin receptors. Breast cancer has insulin receptors. Those insulin receptors
don't seem to develop insulin resistance. So in a high carbohydrate environment, where
you have to have high insulin levels all the time, what does that say for your tumor growth?
It feeds the tumor. What's going to be the game plan? Game plan
is for Jessica and I to connect. Find our what her goals are, find out what's motivating
her and what's stopping her, and working through any limiting factors, and tapping into the
exiting pieces of it, and just really structured goals and sticking to a game plan.
And a lot people try to loose weight but a lot of people fail. Why do you think that
is? They usually don't stick to it, because life
sets in and usually you're the last person that's get's taken care of. There's kids,
there's family, there's work, you know there's other loved ones, everybody is crunched for
time. And usually that's the first thing that goes. And it's not a matter of people not
wanting it, and not being willing to stick to it, it's just the time commitment and the
drive to stick to what you say you're going to do.
Then I met with Darryl who was also starting a 12 week fitness program. From doctor's visits
over the years I ended up with high blood pressure, high cholesterol. So I ended up
going on meds for those which I would rather not take meds, everyday for the rest of my
life. So there's a lot of things going on that you know, it was pretty obvious. Walk
up 2 flights of stairs and be out of breath, I mean all those things make it pretty obvious
that I needed to get in shape. Darryl starts his fitness program by meeting
with Maria Glad, she's a registered nurse and wellness coach. She's establishing a baseline
for measuring Darryl's progress in the weeks ahead.
So I wish that I had a pill that made everybody turn into you know a healthy lean person.
And if someone ever invents that pill you know they will be able to retire early. I
think obesity is so complicated, the physiology of obesity is so complex, there probably is
no such pill to be invented. What I tell me patients is, we do have the medicine and it's
called good eating and exercise. After 6 weeks, I check back in with Jessica
and Darryl. During the Labor Day weekend, Darryl plants
an apple tree with his family. He's planting this tree to celebrate his successful weight
loss so far. After exercising and eating healthily for
12 weeks, I check back in with Darryl and Jessica to see their final results.
Get the scale ready it's right next to you. And you're going to wait for the green light.
Alrighty. You did it! Yes! 215.8.
Wow. Yeah you did it!
In just 12 weeks Jessica has lost 16 pounds and Darryl has lost 20 pounds.
And your BMI start out at 37.9 and it is now 33. And I know you went and saw your primary
care doctor, you were able to get off your statin. Your physician said you're going to
be evaluated in 6 months to come off high blood pressure medication.
I think it was exciting for me because I remember when started, I told you that a 3.0 on the
tread mill was like a full run for me. And then I was warming up and easily doing a 3.2.
Are the results of Darryl abnormal or could other people do this?
Other people definitely do this. My knees feel better than they did. My back
feels better. You know so there's lot of other benefits.
I loved the experience and I thank you so much for that. I think every time I met with
you, you pushing me to go up to a higher weight. Yup.
I might not have done that on my own or known that it was okay to do that. So I think that
was a huge help. You know the way he talks about, how he thinks
about food differently now than he ever did before, how he plans for things, it tells
me that he's made some real changes that he's incorporated.
So sometimes those small choices, a series of small choices can have as big an impact
as you know just one thing. I don't snack at night you know. If I do snack I'm probably
grabbing an apple or a banana. I'm not grabbing, I used to say I'll have a couple of chips.
Well you sit down with a bag and the next thing you know... oh well the chips are gone
and it's ten o'clock at night. So again it's a series of small choices, start making them
and tell people what you're doing, and track your progress, and stick to it.
And what do these trees symbolize to you? Why are they important to you?
Well I think it gives us access to healthy snacks.
Every day the kids come home and want a snack, and I'm excited maybe next fall we'll be able
to say, grab an apple off the back yard. It's good for the environment, because some
trees are getting cut down everyday. What fruit trees do you want to get next?
We talked about pear. Pear.
I'm encouraged to see that obesity can be overcome by eating healthily and exercising.
But what about diabetes, a disease which affects roughly 1 in 10 Americans. I don't know anything
about diabetes. So I decide to meet some families that are affected by it. I want to learn about
diabetes and I want to learn what action can be taken to stop it.
In your pancreas there's this medicine called insulin, and your body generates it. And it
breaks down the insulin into energy. But when the pancreas fails that's called diabetes.
And there's type 1 and type 2 diabetes. And Cole has type 1. So he can't, his body can't
really generate insulin. So he can't really eat anything without giving himself more insulin.
And so you can do that with a shot or you can do it with a pump, which Cole has. Do
you want to show them? Sure. I have an insulin pump here. And it
goes into my body right here. And it's just a little catheter that goes below the skin
and that delivers the insulin into my body. And so how does his diabetes affect the family?
How have your lives changed after the diagnosis? Well it certainly was a big change early on.
We were admitted to the hospital only briefly for a day or two. And then we came home and
we start with the idea of counting carbohydrates. This was new for us. And paying attention
to exactly what we eat. And not just for Cole but for the whole family. I check my blood
sugar every 2 hours to make sure it's at a good level and more often even if I'm playing
sports or running around outside. I think it's, I think the rest of our kids
are also a lot more aware of food. All carbohydrates if you will are not created equal. So eating
a pizza combo and eating an apple, while they might have the same number of calories or
even the same number of carbs are not the same thing.
Alright Cole what do you have right there? Well this is my blood sugar checker and I
use this to tell what my blood sugar is, and then I use the number to figure out how to
correct for my blood sugar. So how does it work?
Well first of all you take a little strip from this little canister I guess. And it
kind of looks like that. Then you put it into the meter. You have to wait a little bit for
it to go through like getting prepared to take the blood. Then in here there is a little
needle. It kind of looks like that. And then you pull it back and just press it into a
finger and it will get some blood to come out. And you kind of squeeze the finger to
get blood out and you put it on the end of the test strip. Then it reads 5, 4, 3, 2,
1. And my number right now is a 70.
And with the number being a 70 do you have to do anything now because of that?
Well usually if I was just staying here and sitting around and stuff, I would have a few
crackers or so to get it up a little bit. But not overshoot it and make it high. So
then if I was playing sports or was active or anything I would usually have more juice
and sugar to bring it up a lot because running and exercise tends to make my number go down.
There's no known cure for type 1 diabetes, but it can be mitigated by taking insulin,
measuring blood sugar, exercising, and eating healthily. I watch as Cole's family plants
2 more apple trees in their home orchard. That's a lot of water.
It needs a lot of water. Let's do the next one.
Here's a mulch delivery. Hey guys do you need this?
Not yet. Okay.
The Miranda Leavitt Diabetes Fund is in memory of my daughter Miranda, who passed away from
complications with juvenile diabetes. Miranda was 22 years old when she passed away.
Well I think in every aspect of her life, with juvenile diabetes healthy diet is key
to maintaining your level of your average blood sugar, it's very key. And the amount
of insulin you take, the more you eat unhealthy the more insulin that you're going to have
to take to bring your blood sugar in check. And obviously she ate healthy it, the amount
of insulin she would have to administer would be a lot less.
This is a book that I had written, actually Miranda wrote a lot of the information in
the book just talks about what diabetes meant to Miranda. We termed it a dictionary for
a life of diabetes and in simplistic terms it talks about what type 1 diabetes is and
that would be the definition and Miranda's definition of type 1 diabetes.
So Miranda wrote this book you said? In her, I picked out pages from her diary
that we still have, and for instance type 1 diabetes long involved term, but very simply
put, type 1 diabetes through Miranda's eyes in her diary she refers to to "I'm not longer
a normal kid. I have to prick my finger 5-6 times a day. Then I have to give myself shots
in the stomach 3 times a day, and to top it all off I'm afraid of needles. I can't eat
the same food other kids eat any more and now my mom and dad have to worry about me
all the time." Brenda is planting an apple tree in memory
of her daughter. As I leave Brenda's house, my heart goes out
to her and to her family for their loss. I never realized how serious type 1 diabetes
could be. I'm shocked. After meeting with Cole and Brenda, I now realize type 1 diabetes
is the more rare form and it can't be prevented. Now I turn my focus to type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes represents the most common form of diabetes in the world. So when we're
talking about diabetes in adults, most of them have type 2 diabetes. And that usually,
not always, but usually is connected to having excess weight. What diabetes means is your
body can no longer control blood sugar. We all need sugar in our bodies as a source of
fuel. It's a fundamental source of fuel. Most of the things that we eat turn into sugar.
And when you have type 2 diabetes you are resistant to the hormone insulin. So insulin
is what you need to control sugars in your body, and to utilize sugars in your body.
When you have type 2 diabetes you make lots of insulin but it doesn't work any more. So
anyone with extra weight starts to go down this path of insulin being made at a very
high levels and not working as well as it should in the body.
These maps are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the left side you
can see the percentage of Americans who are obese, on the right side you can see the percentage
of Americans who are diagnosed with diabetes. The southeast US leads the nation poor health
on both maps. There is also a clear correlation between high rates of obesity and high rates
of diabetes. So the most serious complications of diabetes
stem from vascular disease. And by that we mean the blood vessels start not working as
well as they should. Blood vessels start to become narrow and that happens in small blood
vessels and large blood vessels. So you start to see things like the heart not working well,
or heart attacks in poorly controlled diabetes. You start to see things where the small blood
vessels go which is in your hands and feet. That's why many people thing of amputations
and foot problems in people with diabetes. That's very much a risk. Your kidneys are
very sensitive to blood sugar and over time if the blood vessels going into the kidneys
are damaged, you start to get into kidney failure. The eyes are also very sensitive.
So we talk about vascular disease in diabetes as being a major problem, heart attacks, amputations,
also eye disease and kidney disease is the major problems that we see as a complication
of diabetes. I have neuropathy very bad in my feet. I can
hardly feel my feet. As it went on I had more trouble with my legs.
Do you think that Americans are aware of diabetes? Do you think there's enough awareness in America
of this problem? No. I don't think there is.
Things got worse and they said that I'd have to loose one. And my right one went first.
And how old were you when they took that one? 40 or 45 I guess.
So when you were 40 or 45 they cut off one of your legs.
Yes. And did the problem go away after that or
no? Yeah it seemed to for a while. And then the
other one started acting up, so about a year an half later the left one went.
Wow. Well there's a lot of things I can't do, like
reaching the top of the cupboard or anything. So I have to have help with some of that stuff.
I try to have things down where I can reach most of it.
I think all people think " oh I'm not going to get that".
Why is it important for you to plant a fruit tree? What does that fruit tree symbolize
to you? That's going to remind me every time I see
that, about diabetes and eating healthy. You think the tree will help you eat more
healthy just seeing it? I hope so. You know I try very hard, even
though I look very obese, you know if I could exercise and do stuff, you know it would be
much better. That's awesome.
I really think you know looking at it going inspire me. I hope it does.
Do you wish that you could warn other Americans about how serious this is?
Well I think just looking at me most people realize. But you don't see a lot of people
in my everyday life around here. Because I don't get out to much the way I am.
I admire Loretta for her positive attitude, despite having endured such hardship. After
meeting Loretta it occurs to me, maybe the reason American's don't realize how serious
diabetes is, is because diabetics like her and Jane don't often get out in public. I
wonder if there is any hope for stopping diabetes. So diabetes can be reversible and type 2 diabetes,
because it is more related to weight, often is reversible if a person gets healthier.
This is especially true in the young patients that I treat as a pediatric endocrinologist.
So we absolutely have kids who are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, they may be very sedentary.
They may have extra weight, and if we get them going on some positive changes in their
life, eating more fruits and vegetables, exercising more - some these simple fundamental things.
They can totally reverse their physiology to the point where they don't need the medicines
that I'm prescribing any more. So it's absolutely reversible.
I was diagnosed with diabetes a while back. And the way I got rid of it was to change
the diet. Change the diet, change your attitude, and then everything came around the right
way. But as long as you go into the store and you have them make your dinner for you,
you pick up the box of stuff and you don't cook your own things. The processed stuff
causes this to happen. And did you have type 1 or type 2 diabetes?
Type 2. And now it's gone?
Gone. That's incredible!
Yup. Congratulations.
It's encouraging to know there are people taking action to overcome obesity and diabetes.
There is some hope for improving the health of humanity. But now I wonder is there any
hope for improving the health of our environment? Next I meet with several environmental experts.
I want to better understand environmental pollution.
The obesity epidemic, the diabetes epidemic, really is sort of a sign that we have developed
an unhealthy relationship with food. We've become very reliant on processed and industrial
foods. The whole food system is built around oil,
right from the planting to shipping an so forth.
The way that we produce food now, is reliant very heavily on fossil fuels. The calculation
or the equation is that it takes about 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce
1 calorie of food energy in a highly industrialized food system like the one we have here in the
United States. So that's one of the reasons that people could be concerned. The way that
we're eating right now, is not good for the climate.
According to the Capital Area Food Bank of Washington D.C., on average fresh fruit travels
2,416 miles before being consumed. No there's certainly not enough environmental
consciousness today. We're just consuming resources at an alarming rate and not really
thinking about what impact it's having on the environment.
So a negative externality right, is something like carbon, which is a greenhouse gas. And
when emitted it contributes to climate change. Well there's no tax on carbon, there's no,
there's regulations starting to come out in California and other places, but up until
recently industry could pump out as much carbon as it wanted, and it wasn't polluting. That
wasn't considered to be a pollutant at all. So that's a negative externality that might
go into something transporting your tomato from Mexico or California, or somewhere else,
all the way across the country or into the United States. It's not build into that cost
of the food, right? So we can have what I call an artificially low price for those essential
commodities. According to the United States Department
of Agriculture and Economic Research Service, Americans imported 38 billion pounds of fruits
and nuts in 2009. I wonder how many gallons of gasoline were burned to import 38 billion
pounds of food in a single year. And then I wonder, what would the total number of gallons
be over the course of my entire lifetime. For the first time in the history of our species,
we have probably the lowest percentage of our population involved in the production
of some of it's own food. The lowest.You know if you think about it in the US I believe
in 2006, it hit it's lowest point in terms of people who identified as being gardening
at that time. It might of gone up a little bit since the recession, but the lowest number
of humans percentage wise, actively engaged in some of their own food production.
Is that a risk? What do you think?
The negative externality, that cost that's not built into the price of that piece of
fruit, is eventually going to catch up with us.
You know, for us the most recent thing we've looked at is the oil crisis in the gulf of
Mexico. Where in 2010 you had, I can't remember the number, but an extremely high amount of
oil from the PB well exploding releasing into the Gulf of Mexico. And you think that's one
of our biggest fisheries, that's where a lot of marine species go to reproduce. And maybe
we shouldn't be drilling there. I mean, you know what part of it is you think okay we
started drilling and that was okay, but now we've really screwed it up, maybe we shouldn't
be doing that. And the first year we launched a voyage right after it happened. And we couldn't
get that close. We got within a couple miles of the epicenter of the accident. There were
a lot of ships cleaning it up and trying to make things better. The next year we got right
on top of the epicenter and it was like a desert on the ocean. There was no wild life,
there was nothing for as far as you could see. It was really kind of an eerie experience
and you think about you know a number of people died right there. But the following year,
last year we went out and there's 4 rigs, right around where that one exploded. And
so we don't seem to learn from our mistakes. I think we are currently living in a time
of a broad spectrum of environmental concerns, that are very much linked to our economic
practices, our land use practices. So people would bundle them under an umbrella term of
bio-devistation. Which has to do with the degradation of soil, water, air, sort of species
diversity, habitat diversity. But right now our environment is laden with
lots of different chemicals. From industry, from everyday use that accumulate in the environment.
It's quite dire, there's no two ways about it. And even though some rivers in the US
might be cleaner than they were in the 70's for example, we may have certainly exported
our environmental problems to other parts of the world, which is equally reprehensible.
So I think, you know looking at root causes and taking a systems approach, we need to
look at this whole spate of problems and identify underlying causes, and really shift those
as much as possible. You know one of the things that gets lost
in the global warming, climate change discussion, we focus a lot on our carbon output, and you
know that as a human society been producing more and more carbon and that's what's creating
a lot of the problem which is true. But part of the equation we don't talk about, so we've
lost a lot of trees. We've cleared a lot of forest. I was just out in a conference in
San Francisco and looking back at the city and seeing the amazing number of houses that
are crammed on, when you're in San Francisco Bay and you're looking at the city there's
just houses everywhere and hardly any trees. And you think back once upon a time that was
probably all covered with trees. We've just cleared out so many trees that the trees aren't
there to pull the carbon out of the air that we're producing. So I think, I think we're
affecting it on both sides. We're producing to much carbon and we're eliminating the trees
- the plants that pull the carbon out. After talking to the environmental experts,
it's clear that humanity is burning fossil fuels to ship food vast distances. Humanity
is also polluting the air with carbon dioxide. But the good news, is that by planting fruit
trees locally we can reduce the gasoline used to ship food. Furthermore, through photosynthesis
trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. It's clear to me now that planting fruit trees
is part of a long term solution to cleaning our environment.
If we're serious our environment, then we need every single neighborhood in America
to plant fruit trees. But is that realistic? Alright so Pat what's happened here?
Well that's a good question. I came home yesterday. Walked out on my back porch to I think there
were 48 trees that I counted. And my husband was nowhere in sight, so I was just thinking
"wow what's going on?" And we had been talking about getting some fruit trees. Dwarf sizes
ones that we could. Just a few.
Well yeah, a couple of apples a couple of peaches, a couple of pear. A couple of cherries.
Just enough for us. There are only two of us we don't need a whole lot. And we wanted
to have berries and bushes and that sort of thing. I was assuming this was part of the
plan, but I was kind of surprised when I saw everything. In fact I started laughing out
loud when I saw this yesterday. And then asked him, I called him, and asked him where he
was, he was at the store buying more. So I was like "okay". Wondering how it was going
to paid for and stuff but besides the point, what were we going to do with these things?
That's when he said he was planning on you know going to neighbors and trying to figure
out who would want to support such a thing. And Pat what do you think it going to be the
neighborhood reception? Are you worried at all or no?
Worried isn't, I'm not worried. I'm hopefully that people would want some of these trees.
I just think it would be really cool to be you know the fruit tree capital of Portland.
Rosemont fruit tree... who knows maybe they'll change the name of the street.
Two days later, I attend a meeting at Alastair and Pat's house, where they share their vision
with their neighbors. The permits are just if we plant on the esplanade
is that right? Right.
What's your timeline with these trees that are sitting in bags in your back yard?
They need to be in the ground within 1-2 weeks. Oh okay.
I think it's doable. How long is the permit process?
That's why I'm meeting with. So you'll get a sense on Wednesday of how
long it would take? It's about addressing all of these things,
peak oil, climate change, economic instability, wage issues. It's about creating food security
in a sense. Food prices have been increasing. According
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the past 10 years the national average cost of
apples has increased by 38% per pound. Broccoli is up 87%, chicken prices are up 98% and dried
beans are up 93%. I just see this as a great way of bonding
and being closer. And I wasn't joking when I said about the party, the cider press. I
have this vision of a giant cider press party. You know where we get together as a neighborhood
and rent a press and people can bring whatever fruits they want pressed.
Find out where the interest is and identify where people would want trees. Get their contact
information. 10 days later I watch the neighbors come together
to plant fruit trees at dozens of houses on the street. They plant 49 fruit trees in just
a couple of hours. Now I wonder, are there people in other neighborhoods
who are also taking action? On a Saturday morning I notice my new neighbors planting
fruit trees. I grab my camera and run over to interview them. I want to understand why
they're planting trees. I'm excited about growing fruit. So I'm looking
forward to 3 years from now having all kinds of fruit to eat.
Cool. Have you ever done this before? I have not. I'm new to this.
I think a lot of people had that knowledge. My grandmother back in the 30's and 40's,
during the depression times were hard. You know like a lot of people at that time, she
had a kitchen garden going and kept chickens. And even as a child I remember in the 60's
and 70's, I remember my grandmother canning. We just moved into this house, so there's
all kinds of stuff to do. And so this is only part of it. I've got fruit trees. I've started
a couple of raised beds to grow vegetables. And I've got a bit compost pile going that
I'm managing. I'm doing the hot compost, so I can throw in all my cheese and meat and
bones and what not from the table. I can do it.
No no no, don't get yourself all messy bud. Run run run.
That soil is so badly drained in a lot of the yard, that anything I try to plant on
the ground would get water logged. So trying to do something. It's really helping, the
beds are very well drained. So I put in two 4x8. Ideally, so if we thought of that as
a 4x16, I'd like to put in something in the order of about a dozen more beds of that extent.
A little bit more perhaps. So maybe next year I'll put in two 4x20 beds. For some folks
it's getting off the grid or you know being self reliant. But whatever your political
bent is, I mean I think it's amazing exercise. I mean I work my tail off you know turning
my compost pile the other day, and digging this hole on a hot day. Ordinarily I would
have to do field archeology to get this kind of workout. So I'm doing all this exercise
which is going to yield food that I can eat. If I maintain it right, composting, everything,
last clippings, everything off my table. Seaweed. I'm trying to put nutrients into the soil
to produce the healthiest possible food that I can. I can grow stuff that I could not afford
to buy on my salary as an educator for sure. Cause you can like eat apples from their branches.
See these are about to be apples. See these are going to be little circles, then they're
going to be these big things. I notice another neighbor of mine has a mature
pear tree in their yard. I stop by because I want to find out what it's like to have
free fruit. Well, I like the pears on it.
Really? Yes.
How do they taste Skye? Kind of yucky on the skin.
But how is the inside? Yummy.
What did you and daddy do with your pears? Cut the skin off.
And you brought them to share, right with who?
Yeah, with my friends. How many chemicals have you sprayed on this
past year? Absolutely none. Zero chemicals.
And how many hours have you spend this past year pruning this tree to maintain it?
How many hours have we spent pruning or maintaining it?
Do you have to do a lot of work on the tree pruning?
The only work I have to do is to pick the pears.
I thought you let Skye pick the pears? That's right, I forgot about that. Absolutely
no work. And Skye, how much work is it to pick a pear?
Is it a lot of work? Is it hard? Not really.
Is it fun? Yes!
And how many pounds of pears do you think you'll get from this tree this year?
We'll probably get 1 laundry basket full. A bushel. How many pounds of pears, that's
a good question. Probably about 55 pounds. If my neighbors get 55 pounds of free fruit
from this tree each year, and if pears cost $1 per pound, that means over the next 20
years they'll get $1,100 in free food from this tree. And that doesn't take into account
inflation or the possible increase in the fruit tree yield.
Have you guys considered how much money you're going to save by having this tree to provide
you with free fruit for the rest of your lives? That's a good question also. The savings are
limitless because you don't need to take cash to the store, you don't need to withdraw money
at your ATM. All you have to do is walk out here and get your food or you can make your
own pies at home by just picking the pears etcetera. How about you Jen?
For me the value of Skye having access to a tree like this isn't really monetary. Like
she gets to follow the growth of the pear, she gets to have the whole sense experience
of being outside and watching it grow being patient and picking a pear.
When I was younger during Skye's age. I used to ride my bicycle all over the neighborhood.
And I'd get really hungry, and I wouldn't have any money to stop at the market to get
you know fuel for the fire and the stomach. So it's always nice to know where the nearest
fruit tree is where you can make a pit stop. Dawn and her family are also new to the area.
I meet with her because I wanted to understand why she family planted 6 fruit trees, as soon
as they moved into their new house. Alright so Dawn where are we right now?
We're in my little orchard. And I have 6 little trees that we just planted this spring.
And it sounds like you just moved to this house recently right?
We did. It was a year ago June and there was really nothing existing here in the way of
gardens or setup, so we planted the 6 little trees that we have. And put a deer fence around
them because we were told by the neighbors they won't last a day without a deer fence.
It started when we lived in Hawaii a couple of years ago. I learned that over 90% of the
food that Hawaiians eat, was being brought in across the ocean in cargo containers, and
I realized that we were vulnerable. That we didn't have any available food really. And
having small children that concerned me. One of the things that really intrigues me
about your situation here is that you planted these trees just after moving in here. Can
you elaborate on the impetus for doing that? You first move into a house and boom you're
planting trees right away. Why is it so urgent to you?
Well I guess I had done enough reading to know that you can't put an apple tree in the
ground and get those apples right away. It takes time and a few years sometimes. So it
seemed like a good vision, something to do early on and not to put off.
I've seen a lot of people planting fruit trees. But I still don't know the best way for growing
them. So I travel to New Hampshire to meet with The Guru of Orchards, Michael Phillips.
I want to learn his techniques for growing organic fruit. Michael is the author of the
book The Holistic Orchard. Over the past 25 years Michael has planted over 500 fruit trees.
He currently manages about 240 on his property. You can plant fruit trees in both late fall
and early early spring. Now when you're further north like I am here in New Hampshire, say
zone 5 zone 4 zone 3 for sure, spring planting is a better bet. Just because if you don't
take enough care and you leave air pockets, the tree is just as likely to be pushed out
by the frost action heaving and thawing the ground.
The first thing you need to do, when planting a fruit tree and really wanting to give it
all the advantages it can get, is to dig a good sized hole. So here I'm talking something
on the order of 30 to 36 inches across and 16 to 18 inches deep. Not that's probably
bigger than your root system, but what you're doing is loosing the earth, so the roots can
get a toe hold into the soil. Another thing you want to do is to provide certain minerals.
So rock phosphate, azymite clay which has kinds of trace minerals, can be really valuable
to give that tree the things it needs to get going. What you don't want to do is super
enrich that hole. Take out all the native soil and put in great compost. Maybe up to
25% could be compost in poor soil, but what happens, the roots get the sense of it's really
great to be in this particular hole this guy dug, and then they reach the edge and say
it's not so nice out there, I'm not going any further. It's almost like creating a pot.
So you don't want to get away from the character of the native soil totally. What you will
do over time is build good soil from the top down, just like nature does. So as mulch decomposes
and as you spread compost that's where you're building the soil for the long term. And the
ideal thing for fruit trees and for berries, nut trees as well, is what is known as ramial
wood chips. And this a concept that came to us from Quebec. This particular pile of comes
from a landscaping buddy who dumped a day's work here. You can go to the landscaping center,
but typically most of the wood mulch you'll find there is soft wood derived. It's either
the bark of trees that are used to mill out 2x4's and framing lumber, or sometimes it's
hemlock or cedar. Well none of that is the hardwood deciduous type material when I'm
talking about ramial wood chips. This is something you're either going to make it on your own,
you're going to have a landscape friend, you're going to look for those people who clear along
the roads under the power lines and somehow get them to dump a load at your house. That's
a real treasure. I get around to spreading the ramial wood chip mulch in either the fall
after the harvest or in early spring. And in the fall there's a number of important
things going on under the apple tree. Now the leaves are not quite off, most of this
work is going to take place at that point. But what I want to do, is really help the
biology get those leaves decomposed. Because the leaves are going to carry over some of
the disease organisms until next spring. So when I come in and dump a load of wood chips,
on top of fallen leaves, I'm not trying to mulch the tree the way we think of in a garden
or very neat yard, I'm emulating nature's ways. And a branch falls here, leaves pile
up here because the wind blew them there. And these wood chips are going to decompose
over the course of 2 or 3 years and suppress the growth in this area. All kinds of plants
out in the orchard help create the orchard ecosystem. And one of the real stalwarts as
far as I'm concerned, is the medicinal herb called comfrey. Now comfrey is what permaculture
people call a dynamic accumulator. It has the big deep tap root. And that tap root in
turn is bring up minerals from the subsoil, which go into the leaf of the comfrey, which
when the plant falls over and decomposes, that calcium is made available to the tree.
So it's mining from deeper down. Comfrey is basically a living mulch plant. There's been
about three rounds of growth this season and you can even see one of the earlier rounds
had fallen over. Well that helps suppress growth. And that just makes a little more
room for the feeder roots of the fruit trees. This blackness is the fungi feeding on the
surface. Now I have a friend who actually says "my apples come with a free coating of
probiotics" another way of looking at it is that it's an edible mushroom. But if it bothers
you, the point is with a wet cloth or even a little spit, you can rub it off. It's not
an issue. It's benign. When a fruit grower grafts, because we graft
not only apples but also pears and cherries and plums and peaches, what we are doing is
taking 1 or 2 buds from the variety that we want, and we are essentially splicing it into
another root system. These are some of the trees I grafted 3 springs ago. And these will
be planted out at an orchard in official spacing next spring. They're rather big but, they're
very healthy and very robust. They've been growing in a ramial wood chip mulch bed.
When this was all the size of a pencil in diameter, I grafted a short piece of wood
onto a root stock. And that splice was made right in this vicinity. You can kind of see
a swelling right here. That's where the graft union was. So everything that's grown since
is all this hard cider variety. It's one of the bittersweets. And those 2 buds that were
on that piece of wood called a scion, I let one of those develop a shoot. Now 3 years
later there's the beginning of branches. That is the birthing of a tree. 100 or 200 years
ago most people had some more of a connection with the land. And having 2, 4, or even 12
fruit trees in your yard was part of your home food system. Now I've seen this map put
together by the New York extension people, showing a black dot for every 100 apples in
New York 150 years ago. And the state is evenly distributed with black dots. Fast forward
to the year of this publication, was like 1972, and you see some black dots a few dozen
along the Great Lakes shore and some in the Hudson Valley. But really the heart of the
state has been emptied because people have made that transition to the modern lifestyle.
This vision of many different families getting involved with growing their own fruit and
their own vegetables all the types of foods we can grow, but particularly fruit was common
150 years ago. And we've fallen away from that, letting the commercial trade grow our
fruit because it's more convenient. Most people don't know how fantastic fruit is when you
pick a tree ripe. And I'm talking anything from plum to peach to cherry to apple to pear.
And you get to say, I grew this. This came from my tree. My family grew this.
Michael, tell us about what do spots have to do with healthy apple? What does this mean
to you? Why is that important? Everybody knows the saying "an apple a day
will keep the doctor away". And so that was contrived somewhere in the 1800's. But today,
that's not necessarily the case. And let's look at how we grow fruit. When we introduce
synthetic fertilizers, when we use spray medicines, fungicides that basically tell the tree "you
know that photochemistry stuff the way you resist disease as a tree, well you don't have
to do that we got medicine for that." What we end up with is emptier fruit. Fruit that
doesn't have the vitamins and minerals. Fruit that doesn't develop all the antioxidants
and the different photochemical that our bodies use in tern to resist disease. So maybe the
saying today is "64 apples per will keep the doctor away". But where I'm really coming
from with is the notion that when an apple gets a few scab spots, it gets some suity
blotch, it in turn is being stimulated to produce certain photochemical to not succumb
to that disease. So in a holistic orchard and organic orchard where I recognize I can't
totally eliminate that that's a good thing. This is the apple that 1 a day will keep the
doctor away. Next I hear about research going on at the
Wellesley College Botanic Gardens. It sounds interesting, so I decide to stop by.
Our goal in design and planting is that we want the ground cover to have complete coverage
by the end of the first growing season, so we have far fewer weeds. The whole botanic
garden is the theme of plants as food, and not just for human beings.
I'm an intern with the botanic gardens. I'm a senior here at Wellesley. So today we're
working on a lot of different things. We're working on passive irrigation, filling in
gaps in new gilds that have just been planted, we want to get a good ground cover down before
winter. A lot of different projects and just teaching people who maybe have never heard
about permaculture before, but stumbled onto to this project like what we're all about
and what we're doing. Around this we've got a bunch of different
plants that are really nice. This one here is, I really love this one. This one is called
prostrate birdsfoot trefoil or lotus corniculatus, this is called plena. You can see this is
only about 1 inch tall. Very dense ground cover. Nitrogen fixer so it improves the soil.
You can walk on it. It'll tolerate foot traffic. Why do you think permaculture is important?
Why are you hear today? You know I think permaculture is at least
the way I came across it, when I came across it, it was kind of the first time where I
felt a feeling of hope, about where our world is going, and solutions, towards changing
in that direction. I think permaculture is one of the solutions. I just hope it's not
too late I guess. A food forest, what is that exactly?
Alright so a food forest is like a forest, a woodland, it's a group of perennial trees
and shrubs which don't have to be planted year after year like annuals such as tomatoes
would have to be. So it's a way of producing food, mainly fruit for humans, in a way that's
less energy intensive and less chemically intensive. So it's a way that we can produce
food for ourselves without having to do a lot of work each year. So you plant it, and
initially it's intensive because you have to get those plants established, you have
to get the trees established. But after that point, once they mature, you could have food
for maybe 25 years. Which is really exciting. Funny I thought we had more of the other one.
The big thing is we're working on forming a network of people who are doing this same
kind of thing. So everyone who's growing Asian pears for example, can join our network and
we can be taking data on the health and productivity, even the nutrient quality of the produce from
that tree. And try to get to some real quantified conclusions as to does the presence of sorel
make a big different. Does the presence of comfrey make a big difference. Because we'll
have a big enough data set. It's observational, it's not really experimental. But if you add
up enough observations you can start getting some statistical significance and trying to
understand which variables are most important. We've got our American persimmons down here,
it got munched by deer, but hopefully it will recover. 2 sharapova's, 2 jujube, mulberry,
Asian pears, persimmon, pawpaw, chickasaw plums.
There's so much yard space in people's backyards that's not being used for anything other than
grass. And I think these food forests or food thickets could be implemented on a much smaller
scale in people's yards in suburbia. There's a lot of unused space there and people can
learn about the different kind of plants that are native to their area, and design food
forests that are specifically designed for their climate and their environment.
Lawns are stupid. Lawns are stupid? What do you mean by this?
Well I have a lawn, I have about a third of an acre of land and I'm out there mowing it
every 2 weeks, and my friends come over and say "oh look at all the weeds, this is terrible,
you gotta pull it up and take sod, put it down, and then you'll have a nice lawn. Fertilize
it." And I just think it's stupid. Why not have something usable that's more attractive,
that's more functional, that's better for the environment too.
Perhaps lawns are stupid. Next I meet with a group of volunteers who are transforming
a useless lawn into an edible landscape. I attend a permablitz in Portland, Maine.
Welcome everybody. Thank you all for coming this morning. This is the fourth in our series
of permablitzes in the greater Portland area. Around 12:30 we'll break for lunch. We'll
work again in the afternoon from 1:15 until about 3:15. We'll start cleaning up around
then, that's always a little bit loose ending, but we try to hold 4 PM as the firm ending
time for folks, so that we can just make sure people can, you know we respect that ending
time. We have kind of the wild area on the back
of the property. We have a few fruit trees and we're going to work on creating a bigger
foresty area. Some plant gilding. Create some great microclimates in that.
So, does anyone have any questions about the day or the projects? Sweet.
I think it's the most sustainable more than anything.
Yeah? And anybody can do it. That's what's great
about it you know. You're taking your own power back, as far as feeding yourself.
I think for me it feels like something that's beyond politics. It's beyond decisiveness
and breaking things down. Instead it's building, like coming together to build things that
we want. Most of our agricultural practices are based
on depleting soils and then adding chemicals back into them, to make up for the losses.
Permaculture is based on the foundation that it's all a cycle. We're doing a lot of things
here that are going to bring nutrients back into the soil. And a lot of things that make
it a long term solution for this site. So they're not going to be going in every year
and turning the soil over, disturbing the soil structure, and whatever micro organisms
and fungi are living there. It's a longer term approach.
And for people who don't know, what is a permablitz? For people who are new to this?
Permablitz is kind of a word that recently was created. Permaculture being an item or
sorry idea that has come together of creating this ecosystem. Permaculture is becoming a
greater and greater thing. And then the idea of a blitz, making all of this happen all
at once. You know just like in football all the guys are jumping on you. So we just had
a bunch of people over and here they are blitzing the property, taking thousands of man hours
practically and putting them into just a short period of time to make something awesome.
So I think there's lot of very specific problems. Like I think climate change, peak oil, economic
instability, questions of social justice, wealth and equality. I think those are all
kind of specific problems that in different ways permaculture approaches to particular
communities or permacultural solutions. Basically permaculture principles can be applied to
those problems as solutions. I also think that just across the board there's a lot of
fear and a lot of like paralysis. People feeling like there's no hope or nothing to do. And
so specifically I think permaculture in practice the way that we've been doing it today, with
this type of work party, just gives people a chance to connect, a chance to feel like
there really is something I can wake up and go do.
I think it's more than just growing plants, it's more than just providing local food.
Permaculture really is that culture piece of things. It's those people coming together.
It's creating communities. Exercise too. I mean I love coming to these
things because you get to be intensely involved with people and then intensely involved with
very physical thing. And then to see very quickly a tremendous transformation.
I mean I think it's just a really activated group of people, you know if brings together
a lot of people who are really conscious of what's happening in the world. But then it
gives them a positive outlet to be working together and constructing and building the
alternative. Like building the things we want to see as opposed to just complaining about
and deconstructing the things that we don't. The pear trees are 3 years old. And they bore
fruit this year, the first year, which was pretty exciting. Then we have a cherry tree
which is 2 years old. It's a little dwarf cherry, so it won't get to large but it's
still pretty exciting. That had a couple cherries on it. We planted 8 hazelnut's today. Which
we expect to see hazelnut fruit in 3 years. You know my crop of such and such isn't doing
so great this time, oh but my neighbor's got abundance of it. So you know we'll swap. You
know what I mean. And we can share. Oh gosh share? Gee wiz we don't all have to have our
own lawn mower and our own snow blower and all like this, we can actually share. Wow
what an amazing thing. You know. We've lost that, you know. The ego has taken over and
oh I need my own things. For what? You know, really? So we can live in isolation?
The idea of replacing lawns which are really an artificial construct with gardens, is very
appealing to me. Any little bit that you can do is worth it.
I mean, it doesn't have to be a huge scale thing. If you can start a little tiny garden
do it. You know if you can start a window sill garden, do it. It's baby steps here.
Just start with those and you won't get discouraged and you can do anything after that.
Next, I drive to New Hampshire to meet with Lauren. I've been told that her year if full
of mature fruit and nut trees. In fact, her yard produces enough food to feed her entire
family, and 500 guests per year. I want to know how much effort it takes her to maintain
her trees and I want to know what chemicals she's spraying on them.
Lauren first I want to thank you so much for inviting me over here. I really appreciate
it. So what do we have here? This is a meyers lemon, that's a very common plant and I have
to ask some friends how to really do it properly. You can see the 2 little lemons growing. I'm
kind of excited about that. This is, these are 4 different kinds of figs. But you can
see the little fig on that one. There's another one in here that has a couple more figs. They're
really good we had some last year. Come on out. Out.
The important thing is that people don't think that you can grow apples without a lot of
organic processes and these haven't had one single thing done to them. Now could I sell
them on the market? Nope. But there are for my family and I can make applesauce, I can
make apple juice, I can do pies. We're happy with this kind of quality of apples for doing
absolutely no work. These are Asian pears. And I wish I could tell you the variety, but
I've forgotten. But they're beautiful and they keep really well. We use them just like
you would use apples. So we make lots of pear pies and pear desserts. And they're just delicious
and juicy. And they store really well. And Lauren, this tree is like dripping with
fruit. How much work have you put into this one tree?
None. Really?
I haven't even pruned it. You can just see this is a good choice of a tree for this place.
This pear really loves it here, and I figured that out so I have 3 of them, which is enough
pears for the whole family for a whole year. And what kind of sprays are you putting on
this tree? None. I would never put a spray on anything
on my property. Like poisons, herbicide, pesticides, there is absolutely no reason. Right now New
Hampshire is only growing about 3 to 5 at the most percent of it's own food. Everything
else is shipped in. So if everybody had a little garden and a couple of fruit trees,
it would really go a long ways to what you really mean by resilience and sustainability.
As I leave Lauren's house, I think of the thousands of pounds of free fruit grown in
her yard each year. I'm amazed that she doesn't spray or prune her trees. I wonder though,
what good is it to grow thousands of pounds of food if I can't preserve it.
Next, I decide to meet with Kate McCarty, an expert in food preservation techniques.
So I did about a eighth of an inch to a quarter of an inch slice. So the drying time is about
6 to 10 hours. I did some last night for 10 hours and they were nice and crunchy. So really
it depends on the texture that you prefer. They're dry when they don't feel moist to
the touch, like when you squeeze them. No moisture should come out. And then you can
also, you should be able to fold them so they're still flexible and not have them stick to
each other. And now Kate, the techniques that you're showing
us for apples, can this be applied to other fruits too?
Yes you can do all kinds of fruits this way. So when the recommended period of time is
up, you just check on your apples. You can see they look dramatically different. They've
browned a little because they've been out for 10 hours.
So to store your dried fruits, you can package them in any sort of air tight container. So
that could be glass or plastic. These have like a Tupperware container. These are nice
and dry, but if you have some that you think are on the verge of not quite being dry enough,
package them up and then check on them in a few days. If you see any condensation inside
the container then just put them back in the dehydrator for a little bit longer.
Okay. But these I'm just going to store in a Tupperware
container. If you wanted longer term storage, something
that is more air tight might be a zip top storage bag. This is a thicker plastic, this
isn't like a sandwich snack bag. This is a freezer grade plastic bag. Label and date
it because you think you'll always remember that they're apple slices. It's 11/13.
Dried apples last about a year and again ti depends on the temperature they're stored
at. If they're stored at a warmer temperature they won't last as long.
Wow a year. Yeah.
That's awesome! Yeah.
After watching Kate I realize how easy it is to dehydrate fruits and nuts.
I'm inspired by seeing so many people planting trees in their yards. But what can people
do if they don't own land or if they don't have the money to buy saplings? I find the
answer when I meet Ross. It's really fun you never know what you're
going to get from an apple seed. If can be one of 20,000 different varieties. And each
apple can be very unique. Some won't end up being edible, most of them you can usually
end up using for an apple crisp or something with. But there's also a chance that we could
discover something that we've never really seen before, a completely different strand
of apple. But basically it's great, it's fun to watch them grow. And it's cheap. It's a
good hobby. Basically I've been just taking apple seeds
out of any apple. Cut them apart. Some have a lot of seeds some don't. This one has very
few. Only 2 out of that one, but some have much more. He keeps the seeds in his refrigerator
for 1 month to allow them to germinate. And then, so you take the seeds out and then
after you've taken the seeds out what do you do with them?
You just take recycled egg cartons like this. You know that way it doesn't cost you anything
you don't have to buy anything from a store. I just use the bottoms, I guess you could
use the top if you want to. And you take and put a few seeds in each little space.
And then I just cover them with dirt, you know 5 or 6 in each one that way you have
a good chance to get a couple. Well when I first started doing it, I used to use little
cups and things that I'd actually buy. But as you start to do it more and more often,
those costs add up pretty quick. So this just seemed to be an easy way the cardboard sort
of disintegrates and it stays moist, so the seeds don't dry out. It absorbs some water
to. It's a really cost effective way. If you've ever started any gardening a lot of people
will use their egg cartons just because you get them for free.
So I think we're going to go outside and cover those with dirt and lightly water them, and
see what comes up. You can use stuff that's from your yard, it
doesn't have to be anything fancy. Fill it up. You don't really want to pack it down
and you want to leave it kind of loose, because when these little seeds crack open their little
root is going to be very delicate and so it wants to be able to push through the soil.
Ross shows me a tray of apple tree saplings that have been growing for 2 months.
You have to keep an eye on them for a bit. But once they get a foot or so tall, they're
pretty self sufficient. And they'll get everything they need from either the rain or the ground.
Are you planting without any permission Ross? Today we have permission. Today we've gotten
permission. It's a nice local community here and they're all for healthy sustainable living.
I think the more trees the better. I don't have health insurance right now, so
the more healthy I can eat the better I feel, and the less likely I am to get sick. So healthy
food, organic living, is my health insurance for now. Hopefully I'll be able to afford
some care some day, but until then I mean you just eat healthy, exercise.
Hold on one second I want to take a picture. And we're going to go out in this field, and
set them down and hope they take. So in a few years other people can enjoy them. Whoever
comes. This park hasn't been developed very much
so it's perfect if we can get these in the ground, they'll become a fixture for years
and years. We could do it in a line, we could do it in
a patch. We could do it in a couple places. I'd say we probably want to plant in two areas
just in case one is more prone to slugs and bugs.
If we leave them towards an edge, they're less likely to mow them down before they get
tall enough. Guerrilla growing is technically when you
grow something out in the wild, usually on other people's land or unclaimed land, and
you plant it, and you don't really take care of it. You kind of let it fend for itself
until it's mature, and then you go back and take the fruits or vegetables or whatever
you're growing out there. It's sort of catching on as a phenomenon its been around for a long
time. But a lot more people are doing it with vegetable gardening these days, especially
people who live in the city who don't have land, but come to the outskirts. Basically
it's farming on a small piece of land that you're going to let sort of run wild but hopefully
what you plant will be what's taking over, versus the outside plants that were there
before. So we got a nice little area. We could put a row of some in here.
So Ross do you think this is part of the solution is for Americans to just guerrilla grow on
land that's being wasted? I think if they can take over any plant on land that's being
wasted then that's a great way to get started. You know if you have land of your own that's
even better, but there's no real reason why we should be leaving you know farm land and
different lands unused. Because there are so many people who are unhealthy.
Ross's apple trees are grown from seed, rather than being grafted. The means each tree will
be a different variety of wild apple. Ross has proven to me that anyone can plant apples
trees without owning any land or spending any money. He has planted 48 apple trees in
less than 1 hour. Over the past several months I've met with
many people who have grown food in their yards and local parks. But what about people who
live in cities? Where can they grow food? For the answer, I meet with Courtney of Higher
Ground Farm in Boston Massachusetts. Well we're standing on top of the Boston Design
Center. It's home to Higher Ground Farm, Boston's first commercial rooftop farm. This summer
Courtney and her partner John installed 1,200 modular planters built from milk crates. We
have some tomatoes, and then this is a seeding of arugula that will be ready next week as
well as some different types of Asian greens with are mushroom mizuna's and kale. We have
about 9 different varieties of tomatoes that we're experimenting with.
Was the roof strength a major consideration? Was that something you had to look into and
find the right building that had the strength? The things the criteria that we were looking
for, to find a roof, was it had to be a minimum of 25,000 square feet. It had to withstand
a minimum of 45 pounds per square foot in addition to what you have to deal with for
snow in Massachusetts which is about 50 pounds per square foot. You know when we first moved
up here we have 5 different seagull nests that were all getting ready to hatch. The
parents were very very aggressive. They are used to us now and all the youngsters are
learning to fly. But they were dive bombing us and you know dropping things on our heads.
Seriously? Yes. So that was kind of a funny one.
After seeing higher ground farm, I'm convinced that every vacant city rooftop has the potential
to be a garden or small orchard. Next I'm told there's a man who's taken a
very creative approach to growing healthy food and reducing environmental pollution.
This is the original tractor here. This is a solar cub. Vintage cub I built about 10
years ago to see if we could run a tractor with solar power. It's worked very well ever
since. So what I'm doing here is running the motor though a tooth-belt drive back through
the power take off. Back into the transmission. Backwards.
Then I can use all the gears to run the tractor the way it normally runs.
And now John is this your own design or how'd you figure this out?
Well I just figured out how to power it electrically. And when I originally did it I still wanted
to have the gas drive coming in from the front to. To compare the two. But I don't do that.
I've taken the pistons out and everything. So just have the crank shaft.
This is 6 batteries up here. Then 4 more back here. Which gives me 110 volts series.
And how much do these batteries weigh? What's the weight here?
This tractor only has about 700 pounds of batteries. Because it's a small battery. So
that's about three quarters of a gallon of gasoline. So it has a 750 watt array on top
here. Which is about 1 horse power when the sun shines directly, which it's not do today.
So this array will charge a whole 10 battery, battery pack which is a 120 volt system in
series, which will do some serious work. Why did you decide to do this? What was, what
drove you to do this? This is sort of a test right?
Right well I started at this from the Peak Oil viewpoint, realizing that sooner or later,
we can argue about that until the cow come home, but when we're going to run out of oil.
But sooner or later and right now we're starting to go downhill. There's just not enough oil
like there's been in my lifetime to keep feeding people and running our transportation system
and our economy and our lifestyle the way we've become accustomed.
We have all types of fruit trees. From pears to apples to peaches. Apricots. This last
August our one new peach tree had so much peaches on it that it broke the branches.
Really? Yeah broke them right down so we had to prop
them up. And so how many pounds of peaches did you
get from your tree this year? Well one little tree we probably got 100 pounds.
And how many chemicals did you spray on the tree. We don't spray any chemicals.
Any how many hours of work did you spend pruning the tree this year.
Hardly any. Wow.
That's the beauty of the peach trees. It doesn't enhance GDP when people go to the
hospital less. It doesn't enhance GDP when people realize that they're fulfilled in their
communities doing like growing food and creating music and social enterprise locally.
We outsourced our dinner to a lot of multinational companies, and we need to take that responsibility
back, take that power back into our hands. Rather than have mainstreams folks think that
this is the zombie Apocalypse or some really negative doom and gloom outcome, what if we've
already built living, breathing, functional models of feeding ourselves, even here in
the city? Any effort to bring front and center and source
it ourselves, as opposed to depend on it to be brought to us by somebody else, is a good
effort. Our daily choices, are as important as our
long term goals. If our daily choices don't align with our environmental concerns, no
matter how lofty our long term goals are, it's not going to matter.
But the real solution has got to come from the community. And from our culture. There
needs to be strong cultural changes. So the idea of having everybody plant 3 to
5 trees would be a great way to start. So I think it's about time, that I plant some
trees.