FarmTina

Guest Blogger: A FarmTina Family Seaweed Secret

My mom Jo Ann taught me how to be an artist, a gardener, and an independent & curious thinker. She has a great city garden in Quincy, MA where she has found creative ways to produce loads of veggies, herbs, flowers and compost within unusual spaces, all while balancing her time-consuming career and constant world traveling. She learned this really cool seaweed trick from my great-grandmother, so I asked her to share it with you as we all prepare for the spring.

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See weeds? Use Seaweed!

As a young girl, I remember spending time with my grandmother on Cape Cod. She had the most amazing vegetable garden, and spending time with her, my job was to pull weeds. Often, we would walk down to the nearby beach and collect seaweed. My grandmother would use the seaweed as a mulch to keep the weeds under control. She would spread it out around the plants, both flowers and vegetables, and have very little weeds to tend.

Guest Blogger: Ever Heard of Flexitarianism?

One of my oldest friends Melissa (we went to kindergarten together!) and her husband E.J. (we met at my 10-year highschool reunion!) are scientists, foodies and writers. They had some interesting things to say about flexitarianism, so I asked them to write a guest post and educate us all. They have Ph.Ds, which means they are way more qualified than I am to be telling you about pretty much anything. Don't forget to check out Melissa's food blog Melissa Eats Broccoli and Squash.

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The next time you want to help the environment, eat a PB & J.

Or eat anything else you like that happens not to contain meat. If you do that just once a week, you’ll be doing wonders for the environment! What’s important here is that you do NOT have to become a vegetarian to have an earth-friendly diet, contrary to some popular beliefs. All you have to do is eat a teeny-tiny bit less meat than you do now.

What you eat matters. We think this is a valuable point to consider, especially if you recycle, bike, follow the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” rule, or do other earth-friendly things. If you combined all of those little efforts and multiplied them by a thousand, their helpfulness would still pale in comparison to the help you’d be giving the environment by eating just a little less meat. Consider these statistics:

• If every American substituted one meal of chicken per week with a vegetarian alternative, it would be the same as taking a half a million cars off the road.
• If every American had one beef-free meal per week, it would be equivalent to taking over 5 million cars off the road.
• One meat-free day per week is the same as taking 8 million cars off the road.

You get the picture.