Earlier this year I wrote an editorial style post here on our weblog titled “Off Topic: Real Food,” (about the downfalls of the industrialized food system and why we should all be supporting self-sufficient community initiatives, including urban agriculture) which was met with enthusiastic comments, so I figured I would take an opportunity to elaborate on those goals and give an update on what we’ve been up to. I’ll apologize in advance for the length, I like to talk about this stuff and we at Onetribe think these things are very important 
First and foremost, I am proud to announce that myself and another local business owner (Laurie Lay of All Star Market & Deli) have formally started a 501(c)3 non-profit entity called “Re:New Richmond.” I’ll post up a screenshot of the site itself and a link once it’s live, but here’s the organization logo and top of the site design
Our goals are to raise awareness of sustainable living initiatives in our urban areas, and support healthy self-sufficient communities. This includes supporting local individuals and businesses that create or sell locally produced goods, in addition to community building projects including community green spaces and edible gardens, as well as educational programs at local schools.
Our first two projects are ambitious but certainly doable. We are currently working with the city of Richmond on securing a contract to steward a city owned plot of land in the Woodland Heights neightborhood. This plot, once finished, will serve as a public green space including a childrens area with a green stage/tiny amphitheater and butterfly garden, polyculture gardens consisting of perennial plants, flowers, fruiting trees and bushes, herb gardens, and a portion of the area will be converted to community vegetable garden plots for rent for a very small annual fee, so that community members may grow vegetables, flowers and herbs for their households. We will be doing low impact development to minimize any disturbance to existing native trees, and building a rainwater collection system to outfit a community member’s shed adjacent to the plot to provide irrigation.
Our other current project consists of the transformation and re-utilization of a beautiful several thousand square foot greenhouse on the grounds of a local elementary school.
The greenhouse was built about 5 years ago by Goodwill in cooperation with the city Parks & Recreation department to serve as a team building and educational facility for teaching mentally disabled Goodwill participants job skills. I don’t know how long that project lasted but the greenhouse has been underutilized and/or not utilized at all for a few years. As you can see from the photos it was in rough shape when we first gained access.
In just a few weeks of after work until sunset evenings, Laurie and I have made significant progress on cleaning up the inside and getting it ready for this growing season.
The previous crops in the greenhouse had been planted and grown through black weed-block canvas (which we’ve been pulling up to expose the soil below – in the above photo the right side has been exposed, the left is still covered), spot fertilized by artificial means, and irrigated with potable water. It seems like things were growing pretty well, but there are more natural, more inexpensive ways to grow stronger plants and healthier food.
There is a ton of biomass available for composting – several cubic yards of dead weeds and grass, and we plan to utilize every last bit of it. The goals for processes in the greenhouse include intensive vermi-composting (composting + worms = worm castings – you’re basically growing nutrient packed dirt) both for mixing into the existing soil to regenerate it, as well as to actually heat the greenhouse so we can grow year round. Evenly distributed bins of compost giving off heat (it can reach 100+ degrees inside a compost pile) can keep an enclosed space warm enough to grow through all four seasons. We are also building an intensive rainwater collection system capable of saving as much of the water that falls on the greenhouse as possible, allowing us to irrigate all of our crops while conserving potable water. The greenhouse is planned to be a zero-input (no outside water, no outside fertilizer except for natural compostable waste goods), highly productive polyculture environment.
The end result will be the following:
- Educational garden for the students of the elementary school
- Possible impact on healthful school lunch initiatives
- A place to start vegetable seedlings and perennial plants for our current and future community garden projects, as well as a means to provide the community at large with healthy seed and plants for their own gardens
- A controlled environment for seed saving to continue passing on heirloom and rare varieties of fruits and vegetables to seed banks for the enjoyment of future generations
- A sustainable model for urban growing which can be scaled up or down for any given site
- A place to educate the public about indoor and outdoor natural growing practices and sustainable living
- An opportunity to grow produce, flowers and herbs for non-profit purposes, including donation to other entities such as the local food bank, community organizations holding events, and for farmers market style sales to support Re:New Richmond itself
Other projects that we have considered for Re:New include community gardens in other areas, classes and informational sessions on growing and buying fresh and local produce, providing resources to put consumers directly in touch with farmers and farms that are involved or wish to be involved in farm to table initiatives, including CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs, and extensive nutritional education and self-sufficiency work with children and others in lower income areas.
We are involved in many facets of sustainable living beyond farming and are either directly involved in or support:
- support buy local initiatives
- public transportation and bike lane installation
- sustainable housing programs, particularly affordable projects aimed at giving lower income individuals and families, students and those of public service occupations (teachers, for example) access to healthy housing in fulfilling communities
- public programs that favor the addition of more public green spaces to our urban areas, and the conservation of first class farm lands, wet lands and other areas in need of stewardship that should not be developed upon
Onetribe is of course, by association, involved in many of these things I have spoken about thus far in this post. Our employees help with research and ideas for non-profit initiatives, volunteer their time, and the company financially supports this and other non-profit initiatives. In talking with customers and seeing the reactions to our previous weblog posts about environmental and sustainability issues and our interactions with people on other online sites, we have noticed great enthusiasm and thought it would be a good idea to see how far we could take the idea of publicly supported community initiatives. We have decided that we will start taking donations for Re:New Richmond (upon launch of the Re:New informational website) with our orders to be directly donated in the buyer’s name to the organization. In the USA this is a tax deductable donation and everyone who donates will be sent a receipt by Re:New Richmond. The process will be a simple self-contained portion of the billing section of the Onetribe LLC website’s checkout, a screenshot is featured below.
The donation module will be turned on once the non-profit’s information site is fully active. The donation will by default be set to $0.00 and there is no obligation whatsoever to donate anything at all. The drop down will include a couple of pre-set totals, and the text entry field gives an optional way to donate any other total.
We absolutely understand that some people do not share our interests or are more concerned with other things in their lives. With the current state of the world’s economic system we also certainly understand the fact that many people simply don’t have any extra funds sitting around. Leave leave it blank and act like it never happened, you won’t hurt our feelings Regardless, we are doing everything we can to foster new ideas and teach and learn every day, and if I have the ability to lend a hand even further than my own efforts by enabling other people that may be interested in such things to support grassroots initiatives, that is something I am interested in doing.
At the Onetribe headquarters the strawberry patch we planted last spring is doing great, and if you stop by during late spring or summer expect to be offered some nice juicy organic strawberries during your visit!
We also have a cart full of seedling pods that we just planted this past week for our peppers, tomatoes and several kinds of herbs and flowers. These will go into our own personal gardens, some of the planters at the Onetribe studio and into the greenhouse. Everything we are planting is an heirloom variety of 40-100+ year old saved seed from a few different seed banks here in Virginia, including Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello seed bank. They are open pollinated, naturally produced seeds saved for generations by families both here in the USA as well as families from abroad that have brought their own country’s seed with them as they immigrated. Heirloom seed is an important way to maintain genetic diversity of plants that may otherwise become extinct, particularly as more and more industrialized foods are genetically modified or scientifically bred. Aside from that, they just taste really freaking amazing!
Please tell us about your own garden or sustainable living efforts! Pots on the back porch? Planters at work? Community garden in your neighborhood? Do you save rainwater? Do you visit a local farmer’s market to support local growers instead? Let us know, leave a comment!
hey wow thats so awesome!!
i buy everything organic/free range meat and where i am theres a little family owned healthy/organic store which all there fruits, vegetables and everything else comes from local farmers and some of the owners of the store make them to. this is where i do the bulk of my shopping. once i can afford to get my own house i’ll be planting my own food more often.
thats so awesome though, i will definitely be giving some donations next time i order something from you guys. i’d love to help out in some other way to. to let you guys know i am an artist, if you need any kickass poster designs or maybe some art for the site itself feel free to let me know, i love and really support what you guys are doing here.
That greenhouse looks like a lot of work but I can only imagine how wonderful the results will be. I wish I’d had an environment like that to learn in when I was in grade school.
I do a bit of herb and tomato gardening on my deck (I’m in a townhouse so my gardening options are limited), but this year my partner and I took the plunge and bought into a CSA, which should be starting up in the next week or two. This is something we’ve talked about for a while, and I am more excited about it than about almost anything else in my life right now. We try very hard to keep as much of our business, especially when it comes to food, in the community as much as possible, but this is the biggest step towards that we’ve taken so far.
Happy 420 to everyone at the Tribe…As far as today goes, I could not think of a more appropriate blog than this one right here. At some point today, don’t forget to give our Mother Earth a hug. Afterall, she takes care of us and brings us all this fabulous jewelry. Grow on!
Wow, this is awesome!!
I am also very interested in growing my own food and living sustainably. I totally wish I lived by you guys so I could come visit!!
This summer I plan to start a small garden (we have a very small square of grassy area near my house), and due to limited space, I am REALLY interested in starting some strawberry planters like you have. So if you have the time, I’d really appriciate it if you could give me some tips on how to start one
Keep up the good work!
I wish i lived closer to you guys! I’d love to come and do some volunteer work, and show my support! if you guys got any projects going on next summer, I’d love to drive out and help you guys :]
Great newsletter, guys & gals!
My gf and I just started our new garden this past weekend. Planted a few different herbs (dill, spearmint, parsely, oregano) and a few different flower varieties. This week the veggies are going in the ground. We’re definitely hyped. Nice to see more people getting their hands dirty!
Have you considered implementing an RSS feed? It would be nice getting updates on your site sent directly to my inbox every morning
Just a suggestion… Keep up the awesome work!
Nice article I came upon from your email. Since I live in South Florida, almost everything is easy to grow. I have a small back patio and it’s almost full of containers with grape tomatoes, basil, jalapeno, chilly chili pepper, dill, cucumber, yellow squash, marigolds, green onions, rosemary, cilantro, peppermint, oregano, chives, parsley, violas, and sunflowers. I’m also growing cat grass for my 2 kitties. A lot of the stuff I just planted, so I can’t wait til summer!
First off, I love Onetribe’s jewelery and have been buying/referring everyone that will listen to you guys for their body jewelery needs for years.
Second – It makes me really proud to see people actively trying to make this world a better place. I think the greenhouse and the whole project is a big step in the right direction for your community. It’s great that there is a butterfly garden, etc. to help engage and inform the kids. As cliche as it is, they really are our future. They need all the tools and information they can get to make informed, socially concious and aware decisions. Good on you guys! Wooh!
I’ve been trying to do my part for the earth in every facet of my life. I ride my bike or take the bus. We have plum/apple trees in our back yard and we are also starting an organic veggie garden – complete with compost. I work at a coffee shop that throws away its coffee grounds at the end of the day and recently I’ve been pushing to get a program going where we save the grounds and people from the neighborhood can come get some for their gardens. After much pressure ( and a bit of nagging! ) it is finally coming into fruition this week. I’m very stoked about this. Also, myself and my co-worker have been working with the rest of the staff to revamp the recycling (or lack thereof) program here at work by putting signs and bins in more visible places. It’s important for people to remember that all of their actions have reactions – at home and at work. If you spend 40 hours a week at a job, that’s a big chance to do the right thing — bring a lunch, bring a travel mug, ride your bike, recycle. This is everyone’s fight and even one person can make a difference!
You guys are awesome, and an inspiration to the rest of us!
There is nothing better that my family likes than our own home-grown produce. Every year we plant quite a few tomato plants, along with squash, peas, beans, carrots, and this year we chose to plant some spinach, too! And what we don’t/can’t grow ourselves we buy from local producers, or glean from the fields after harvest.
We have utilized space in the front and the back of our house, and since we’re right on a major road people driving by or living next door see us working in our garden all the time – not to mention that since we usually have much more than we can eat or process for food storage we share around the neighborhood quite a bit too.
I can’t wait for the salads!!
This is so fantastic!
My partner and I work hard in our tiny apartment. We have no balcony, so we rely on indoor window boxes to grow herbs (dill, several types of basil, garlic chives, cilantro, oregano). We’re trying 4 types of lettuce now to see how well that works.
We recently got permission from our property manager to garden the little yard between our building and the next. We weren’t sure of the quality of the soil, nor how interested the local fauna and neighbours would be in any fruiting plants, so we decided to skip vegetables this season and put in a butterfly garden instead!
I did a lot of research to locate native, drought-tolerant plants that butterflies love (for all developmental stages of their life cycle), and we found a local source for organic, heirloom and native seeds (Urban Harvest in Toronto). We’ve planted Blue Stem grass, Bee Balm, Butterfly Milkweed, and Coreopsis. The Echinacea is having a fake winter in our fridge, currently, and will be planted in a week (after the date of the last frost). We also have plans to add black-eyed susans (a gorgeous red variant), meadowsweet, and other native and/or butterfly-lovin’ plants.
As we were digging the first bed, we noticed that there were fewer contaminants (the yard has been a dumping ground for who knows how long!) — only a few batteries and lots of broken glass and plastic — a ton of earthworms, and an utter dearth of the wretched snail, which plagues most of the rest of the neighbourhood. This is terribly exciting! And it makes for a very strong temptation to plant lots of greens (no fruit to steal and no root vegetables, in case there’s more contamination than thought). I came across a great article on the wonders of the Japanese Red Mustard plant, which is both ornamental and edible at every stage of growth: baby leaves, mature leaves, flowers, seed pods, and seeds!
I’m thrilled to death to be able to finally have a yard to cultivate, even if it does require insane amounts of soil sifting and detritus removal.
We also visit the year-round farmers’ market that’s a 10-minute walk from our home. We got 98% of our fresh produce from farmers’ markets in the last year, which meant we ate almost entirely organic, local produce.
We save our shower, bath and laundry water to flush our toilet with and my partner bikes to and from work throughout the year, even in Toronto snow! I’m a full-time mother and walk everywhere or take public transit with my son — no car to futz with.
I’m just so thrilled that Onetribe is doing this sort of work. It does the heart good and makes me green with happy.
This is an amazing project. The kind of thing that renews hope in the world. It’s great to see a business that’s not just a business, but a part of the community while advocating for environmental and social causes. Also, your compost powered greenhouse is incredible. I’ve heard people talk about this kind of thing, but I’ve never read about the system in progress. Where did you learn how to do this? Kudos to you on all you’re doing.
This is the third growing season we’ve utilized community gardens in lil’ ol Kirksville, MO. The sharing of resources, knowledge, dirty hands, compost, and beautiful plants makes it a real Missouri summer.
Farmer’s Market saves us every year. Home canned applesauce can only marginally recreate the 50# of apples that went into it. And veganism (thanks for the wooden earrings!) and eating local in the winter doesn’t always work so well. What’s for dinner? Potatoes? Carrots? Beans? We’re regulars at the farmer’s market and have even started an environmentally conscious bakery, The Covert Cupboard (www.covertcupboard.com), as a result of the market community. Our granola bars are insane. The Covert Cupboard is almost entirely domestic (we’re phasing out the coconut as soon as our 25# bag runs out (this might be awhile)), and the bakery is 100% vegan for various awesome reasons. Don’t forget the bike delivery, organic stuff, buying from local producers, ordering through a food-coop, compostable packaging (only when packaging is necessary), and we’re working on a reusable bag system. It takes awhile with only two of us and a baby. But we think we’ve got a good thing going.
We 100% admire your efforts. Onetribe is hands-down the best business I’ve ever bought from. Keep up the good work and fighting the good fight.
Sorry about all the (parenthesis),
Jerry
Thanks for writing this great blog I really enjoyed.
Hey! This is the guy who came in today and asked about tagua nuts. I had a really nice time talking with y’all and browsing your wares.
If I wasn’t about to move, I’d love to help out with your project. Maybe I still can somehow. I have one idea that I think you might appreciate. Consider growing a lawn of roman chamomile in the urban greenspace you mentioned. Maybe the area around the stage can be planted with chamomile instead of grass. While German Chamomile grows tall, the less common Roman Chamomile grows along the ground, loves to be stepped on, and smells absolutely amazing! It smells like apples and honey. I have only grown a single plant, but I don’t think it would really need much mowing at all, if any, but this would only make it stronger, and it would actually be enjoyable to mow (VERY aromatic).
This photo demonstrates that kids love it:
http://www.victoriananursery.co.uk/pretty_perennials/chamomile_lawn/l/chamomile_lawn.jpg
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This year will the the first in a while that I’ve had a decent space to garden. I’m going to try the traditional corn, beans, squash (three sisters) polyculture. I planted seeds of a few types of heirloom tomatoes that I saved from fruits I purchased from the farmers market. Another plant I’m very excited to grow this year is Dioscorea batatas; a wild yam vine that grows tiny edible tubercles all along the vine. They’re pretty much like inch-wide potatoes that are really easy to harvest.
I think anybody can get excited about growing food, and you have an excellent plan to bring this positivity to Richmond!
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My friend, Stu, makes compost tumblers and rain-barrels and sells them for cheap. He is located in Richmond. Maybe you and he can collaborate somehow.
http://stubarrels.blogspot.com/
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Good luck with this project! I’ll let all of my Richmond amigos know about it.
A Good blog post, I will bookmark this post in my Digg account. Have a awesome evening.