Food+Farm

Website

Rabelais is pleased to be a sponsor of Space Gallery's 2nd Food+Farm, a weekend of voices and activities. We will be selling books at the events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and will also be hosting a book signing with Bryant Terry at our shop on at 2pm Sunday. here's more info:

FOOD+FARM - Examining our access to sustainable food
Thursday, May 7 - Sunday, May 10th, 2009
Presented by SPACE Gallery, the Maine Organic
Farmers and Gardeners Association and Cultivating Community
All events (except Saturday's Urban Garden Fair) held at:
SPACE Gallery - 538 Congress St, Portland, Maine
Info: (207) 828-5600 | www.space538.org | info@space538.org
Buy advance tickets at: www.brownpapertickets.com/producer/5845

The headlines are full of food and gardening stories: The Obamas plant a White House vegetable garden (an idea championed at last year's Food+Farm by Roger Doiron of Kitchen Gardeners International), the Secretary of Agriculture jackhammers up the pavement in front of his office to create a People's Garden, the National Gardening Association predicts a 19% increase in the number of new gardens, the New York Times Sunday Business Section devotes a full page and a half to talk about Michael Pollan, Alice Waters and the new documentary Food, Inc. Public interest in healthy, sustainable food is clearly at a crucial point.

Food+Farm is a 4-day event which examines our access to sustainable food. It is intended to motivate and inspire our community with some of the brightest leaders in sustainable food thinking and activism, both from Maine and from away, to understand the challenges to safe, responsible food and to illuminate opportunities that are available to producing and accessing it. Recognizing the need for positive action to compliment awareness, we want to provide informative and affordable hands-on workshops that will teach the skills needed to produce healthy, locally grown food. This year's hands-on components have a special focus on urban and small-space food production to address the majority population of Portland's living circumstances.

Thursday, May 7th,7:30pm Ted Ames: Fishing Voices. The Stonington lobsterman and MacArthur "Genius" winner will discuss his work researching the past and future of wild fisheries and how they can be restored and used sustainably. The event will include a screening of local filmmaker, Cecily Pingree's short film, Fishing Voices.
Friday, May 8th, 7:30pm- Food, Inc. screening. A special advance-release screening of the new documentary exposing how corporations compromise profit over consumer health and safety in the American food industry. The film features such sustainable food luminaries as Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma), Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Joel Salatin (Polyface Farms), and Gary Hirshberg (Stonyfield Farm). Introduction and post-film discussion with Russell Libby, Executive Director, MOFGA. Website: www.takepart.com/foodinc
Saturday, May 9th 9am-Noon - Urban Gardening Fair at Cultivating Community's Boyd Street Urban Farm in downtown Portland. The event will be a variety of demonstrations including garden preparation, composting, container gardening, rainwater collection and raised bed gardening. CC website: cultivatingcommunity.org
Saturday, May 9th, 7:30pm - An Evening with Bryant Terry. Eco chef, author, food justice activist, Bryant Terry works in many facets of food advocacy. He is currently a fellow of the Food and Society Policy Fellows Program, a national project of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and has worked to build a more just and sustainable food system and has used cooking as a tool to illuminate the intersections between poverty, structural racism, and food insecurity. Website: www.bryant-terry.com
Sunday, May 10th 9am-5pm - Food+Farm University. MOFGA helps organize a series of intensive workshops to give attendees the skills to start producing their own sustainable food with a focus on urban/suburban food production. Topics will include, small space gardening, beekeeping, chicken care, root cellars, fruit for small spaces and vermicomposting. Taught by some of Southern Maine's leaders of local food production and preservation.