Okay, ME!!!
I will be presenting Saturday, September 27 from 3 to 4 pm at the Sustainable Living Roadshow (SLR) in the dome. The topic is Urban Agriculture: Growing your own Food in the City since that seems to be my specialty. Of course, being so multi-talented, I had a hard time narrowing it down to one subject. Wink.
Spread the word. Hope to see you all at the SLR fair.
Whew. Glad that's over with, and ready for more. I still get butterflies and feel anxiety for a presentation even with 15+ year's public speaking experience. My biggest challenge yesterday was cramming 4+ hours of presentation material into 50 minutes. Overall, I'm not too pleased with my performance. I left out a lot of information to make the presentation more complete, but I haven't given the presentation in a while and feel rusty. Hell, 50 minutes is just enough time for an introduction. It takes 50 minutes before I feel like I'm getting my grove on and hitting my stride. I can only hope that I sparked enough interest and generated enough information to inspire the twenty or so people who attended to grow their own food.
ReplyDeleteI began with the lovely Lettuce from California an Ode to You
Topics covered:
What inspired me to start growing my own food: curiosity; my son so he could eat the healthiest food possible, nutritional benefit; and Peak oil
How I learned: books; talking with other gardeners; and volunteering 1700 hours with AmeriCorps at Beardsley Farm because UT, though an agricultural school, offered nothing in the lines of organic gardening
Why I'm so adamant on teaching: Katrina and the realization that in times of crisis, the poor will receive no assistance; peak oil; no gas for cars means no gas for trucks which means no food in the grocery (and subsequently, which I didn't mention because I'm rusty, to run farm equipment); and nutritional benefit especially for the poor who need it most
How to build a garden: growing in 5 gallon buckets for people who don't have a yard; community gardens Beardsley Farm; no till/ sheet mulch (though I didn't use this specific terminology); seeds/plants; buy heirloom not GMO or hybrids; companion and inter planting; square foot gardening concept; keep a gardening journal
Resources: Beardsley Community Farm; Book The Vegetable Gardener's Bible; Knoxville Permaculture Guild
The presentation I normally give is a 4 hour class which could easily be a 6 to 8 hour class. I would still consider that an introduction. How does one squish 5 years of gardening experience into 50 minutes? The best she can, that's how.
Since I can't edit my comments after I hit add comment, and unless I want to cut and paste all day long back and forth into Microsoft Word resetting links and underlines each time, I am forced to continue adding comments. That's okay, then I look well read from the front page..."Oh, look, that blog post has 15 comments. Must be a good one. Think I'll go read it." Then when the readers arrive, they realize that all 15 comments are from the author. Is that a little like talking to myself?
ReplyDeleteSome other topics I touched on yesterday: the importance of eating seasonally and even organic produce comes from big monoculture farming practices.
Coming soon: the next installment of What I Forgot to Tell You and Conversations with Myself not to be confused with Hugh Prather's Notes to Myself, but probably not unlike that. either.