Envision Urban Agriculture in Urban San Diego

Hillary of Girl Next Door Honey giving the buzz about local bees

Last month Slow Food Urban San Diego held an Envision Urban Agriculture Fair in partnership with the San Diego Food System Alliance and International Rescue Committee at Silo in Makers Quarters, Downtown. Together with our good, clean & fair collaborators, we provided the community resources to grow food in our city at this free event. The fair featured an urban farmers market, live music, local organic food and beer, seed exchange, composting workshops, resources for growers, cooking demos, and the Lexicon of Sustainability exhibit.

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A BIG thanks to all our collaborators including Girl NextDoor Honey for the Helping Honeybees Workshop, The Heart & Trotter  for the butcher demo, Kitchens for Good and Vivacious Dish for a raw desserts demo, and Specialty Produce, Karl Strauss, Golden Coast Mead and Kashi for their generous food and drink donations. 

Join SFUSD on August 13 at Suzie's Farm for a Sunset Concert

Ready for some summertime fun? Spend a carefree evening at Suzie’s Farm enjoying warm summer breezes, a golden sunset and listening to the dreamy music of Mr. Gregory Page.

Suzies Farm is offering a special field tour starting at 3pm as an add-on. This will also ensure you are one of the first in line when doors open so you'll grab a great spot!

Golden Coast Mead will be on tap. This event is partnering with Mindful Fitness. A portion of proceeds will benefit Slow Food URBAN San Diego, so come on out and show your support.

$27 open seating (bring your own chair/blanket) registration in advance $40 reserved seating for picnic tables limited availability

Get tickets here. PLEASE NOTE: No sales at door.

Facebook event page

2015 Good Food Community Fair

By Sarah M. Shoffler, SFUSD board of directorsPhotos by Eric Buchanan

We had a great time at the 2015 Good Food Community Fair! This year's event, at the wonderful Quartyard, featured some of the best of San Diego's thriving slow food scene: coffee, honey, beer, pigs, sea urchins, yellowtail, sushi, oysters, kombucha, mead...plus farmers, fishermen, chefs, brewers, beekeepers, butchers, food researchers, publishers, educators and conservationists. Check out our photos below!

Over 40 partner organizations, our colleagues in the San Diego Slow Food movement, brought their variety of good, clean & fair food for all to our annual event. We owe our success to these partners, plus to our generous donors of food, supplies, raffle items, time and expertise, and to our awesome volunteers. Not to mention the rockstar staff at Quartyard. See you next year!

Like this year's artwork? You can buy an artist-signed print, of just the art, for $10. Email us at info@slowfoodurbansandiego.org. 

Our amazing partners and sponsors:

1:1 Movement, Baby Cydesdale, Café Virtuoso, California Sea Grant, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Catalina Offshore Products, Cat Chiu Phillips, Chef Rob Ruiz, City Farmers Nursery, City Farming Academy, Culinary Historians Of San Diego, Community Health Improvement Partners, Cook Pigs Ranch, Duck Foot Brewing, Edible San Diego, Epicurean San Diego, Ernest Miller, Girl Next Door Honey, Golden Coast Mead, Green Flash Brewing, Jeanne's Garden Program for Children, Kashi, Leah’s Pantry and EatFresh.org, Master Gardeners of San Diego, NOAA Fisheries, Nomad Donuts, Nopalito Hop Farm, Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center, One Bag World, Project New Village, RainThanks, Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego County, Revolution Landscape, San Diego Weekly Markets, Slow Food San Diego State University, Slow Money SoCal, SoCal Fish, Stone Brewing Co., Surfrider Foundation San Diego, Suzie's Farm, The Humane League, Tuna Harbor Dockside Market, Via International, Viva Pops, Wild Willow Farm & Education Center, Women of Coffee Microfinance Fund, Specialty Produce, The Meat Men, Eclipse Chocolate, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, Next Door Wine + Craft Beer Bar, Dr. Bronner's, Blind Lady Alehouse, Leroy's Kitchen, Suzie's Farm, NINE-Ten, Curds and Wine, Epicurean San Diego, San Diego Food Systems Alliance.

Girl Next Door Honey Pollinates Hearts and Minds

By Sarah M. Shoffler, SFUSD Board of Directors

Bees are critical to pollinating plants and to growing thousands of fruits and vegetables that we eat. They are the only insect who make food that humans eat. But since the 1990s, beekeepers around the world have noticed bee colonies are disappearing. Added to that, droughts mean less access to their food supply. These things together spell trouble for these amazing five-eyed, honey-producing critters.

DID YOU KNOW?There are three types of bees: worker, drone and queen. All worker bees are females. Their wings beet 200 times per second or 12,000 beats per minute. The average worker bee produces about 1/12th of a tablespoon of honey in her lifetime. Bees communicate through pheromones and dances. Plus watch this.

Hillary Kearney of Girl Next Door Honey

But you don’t have to convince Hilary Kearney, Owner of Girl Next Door Honey, of the importance of bees. Her whole business is grounded in making bees accessible to people on every level.

“First and foremost I am educating people about bees and I find that they are often less afraid of them once they have a better understanding of what they do. I like to think of it as 'pollinating hearts and minds,” says Hilary. She does this by: teaching classes on backyard hives, managing home hives, relocating hives, teaching children about bees and giving Beehive Tours to the public. These efforts, she feels, will broaden bee knowledge among the public and lessen people’s fear of bees, which are critical to “engaging people with bees and on a larger scale their local food and ecosystem.”

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Hilary cares about her bees. Under normal conditions, bees will produce excess honey, enough to supply us humans with the sweet stuff and still feed themselves. But during a drought, there are fewer flowers, which means less nectar, which the bees need in order to make honey. So they may not be able produce enough for themselves and may have to work harder and travel further just to find the nectar. To support her bees, who rely on honey as their only food, Hilary doesn’t harvest honey during a drought. So when people buy honey from her, they can be assured that the bees it was taken from have enough food and are not starving.

Hillary tending her bees.

In addition, the drought has weakened the wild colonies in the area. They are producing smaller and weaker swarms (when a queen leaves a colony with worker bees to form a new colony). “When I do a bee rescue it takes more effort and resources to keep those bees alive and healthy” she says. Wondering what you can do to support bees?

HOW TO HELP BEES:

• Avoid neonicotinoids in pesticides. These are thought to weaken bees’ immune system and make bees vulnerable to disease, parasites, extreme weather, viruses, poor nutrition, and other stressors.

• Plant organic bee-friendly flowers, like California poppy, citrus, sage, sunflowers and others listed here.

• Make a bee drinking fountain: fill a baking dish or pet water bowl with pebbles or marbles and water. The bees will stand on the marbles while they drink, without drowning.

To learn more about bees, honey, beekeeping and how to help bees, you can check out Girl Next Door’s partnership with Suzie's Farm and their new monthly Beehive Tours. You’ll be able to suit up and go into a beehive with Hilary. Or, come check her and our other bee-positive partners out at the Good Food Community Fair, Sunday, October 11th.

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More than Honey and Sweet Sips Networking

Honey tasting.

Big thanks to everyone who came out for our Sweet Sips networking event in July at Local Habit. Mead tastings by Golden Coast Mead, honey tastings offered by Wild Willow Farms and local beekeepers from the San Diego Beekeepers Society and special honey-based dishes by Chef Jimmy. A sweet time, indeed.

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And thanks to all who joined us for the re-screening of the More than Honey documentary. This is an amazing, intriguing, beautiful and quirky film. Please see it if you haven't already.

For those of you interested in learning more about bees and what you can do locally, here are a few great local resources:

San Diego Beekeeping Society holds classes and meetups to encourage responsible beekeeping. Lots of expert members there. You can find a list of beekeepers on their website who perform live bee removals and other bee resources in the county.

Wild Willow Farm is a non-profit organization offering beekeeping classes (also farming classes). The instructor is very knowledgeable about bee issues locally and globally and can tell you about hosting a hive on your property.

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Girl Next Door Honey offers beekeeping classes and workshops, one-on-one consulting, a host-a-hive program and performs live bee removals.

If you need to remove bees from your property, please consider live removal by one of these folks or those listed on the Beekeeping Society website. Bees are important to our food supply and need a helping hand. Stay tuned for future bee-related events.

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