Thank you for a wonderful weekend at Winvian!

Thank you everyone who attended our Special Culinary Fundraiser and Summer Gathering! 
CT NOFA had an incredible time at Winvian last weekend! Enjoy this short video and collection of photos to show our gratitude for your support!

Claire Criscuolo receiving the 2014 Organic Leadership Recognition Award    

The Big Picture

By Bill Duesing

We've been traveling around our beautiful country this summer.  Aside from the wonderful natural places, we've seen evidence of incredible wealth and of some big messes we've made and abandoned. 

From Texas west, the drought has dried up lakes, closed parks and seriously impacted forest health and agriculture.  There are so many decaying small towns.  Yet the supermarkets are well stocked, most even with a widening organic selection, and the container ships keep coming from Asia to fill store shelves, homes and the burgeoning number of self-storage facilities.

Center pivot irrigation systems help produce alfalfa, wheat and corn in the desert, until the aquifer dries up.  Long, long trains carry coal east across the top of Texas.  Other long trains there carry shipping containers to fill southern stores. During two days of driving, we passed full cattle trucks heading west and empty ones heading east. Must be to a big distant slaughterhouse. Everywhere there are ads for elaborate hamburgers.

It is clear that this is not sustainable.  We are now using the resources of one and a half Earths each year.  In the Houston area, it seems like they are working as hard as they can to use two Earths' worth of resources.  They are building highways in the sky.

Rock formations and Native American names remind us of the longer history of this land and of the enormous changes that have occurred.

I think that "The Big Picture" written nearly 20 years ago for The Natural Farmer is still relevant and useful in guiding our response to the serious challenges we face. 

Auction Items for Sale!

We had a very successful silent auction this past Friday night at our Special Culinary Fundraiser! 

We do have a few items left that we are now selling at the minimum bid prices. 

We are selling items from Earth Tones Native Plant Nursery, Audubon Greenwich, the Litchfield Jazz Festival, Griffin Woodworks, Sisco & Berluti, and Lawrence Jeffery Estate Jewelers. 

To Purchase any of these items please call our office at (203) 308-2584

For a more details description of each item are after the jump...

Notable People at Winvian

By Bill Duesing

At the upcoming Winvian event, you will have the unique opportunity to hear from and visit with many notables, including two notable women who are pioneers and leaders in the local, sustainable and organic food movement. I've had the great pleasure of knowing, working with and being inspired by them for decades.

For over 40 years, their work has exemplified the holistic nature of the changes that are needed in our food system if we want a healthy future for people and the environment.  Both these women have inspired CT NOFA members.  They also remind us that this isn't a new or short term problem. 

In 1978, Joan Dye Gussow published her classic book, The Feeding Web: Issues in Nutritional Ecology. She was then and for several decades more the Mary Swartz Rose chair of the Teachers College nutrition program at Columbia University.  Her approach to nutrition was radical at that time and to some extent still is considering the narrow vision of many in the nutrition profession. 

Throughout her career, Joan has connected nutrition to farming, and health to the nature of the food system.  She inspired and educated many of our current food heroes.  Michael Pollen for example, said "Once in a while, I think I've had an original thought, then I look and read around and realize Joan said it first."