Somerville Voices: What do you think, Somerville?

Hello Somerville! Have you been reading Novella Carpenter's Farm City or Paul Fleischman's Seedfolks? Join the conversation by posting your commentary below.

Just Added: Post-Discussion Drinks at Highland Kitchen

The Friends of the Library are inviting anyone who's interested to continue this coming Thursday's discussion of urban farming and Farm City at Highland Kitchen after the Library closes. We hope you'll be able to come!

Discuss Urban Farming and Farm City with Jessie Banhazl

We're getting excited for the first book discussion of this year's Somerville Reads! It will be held at the Central Library this coming Thursday (April 5th) at 7:00 p.m. and will be led by Jessie Banhazl (pictured), co-founder, managing director, and owner of Green City Growers, a Somerville company that installs and maintains organic vegetable gardens for homeowners, businesses, restaurants, and schools. By the way, if you haven't read Farm City yet, come anyway! In addition to discussing the book, we'll be discussing urban farming in general and it's sure to be an interesting and lively evening. Below is a list of a few more resources on this topic, all of which are available through the Minuteman Library Network - happy reading!

Books

Another Turn of the Crank: Essays by Wendell Berry

Bringing It to the Table: on Farming and Food by Wendell Berry

The Dirty Life: a Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love by Kristin Kimball

Folks, This Ain't Normal: a Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World by Joel Salatin

Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution by Jennifer Cockrall-King

Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life by Jenna Woginrich

My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned his Big City Backyard into a Farm by Manny Howard

On Good Land: the Autobiography of an Urban Farm by Michael Ableman

Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays by Wendell Berry

Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century by Dr. Dickson Despommier

Your Farm in the City: an Urban Dweller's Guide to Growing Food and Raising Livestock by Lisa Taylor and the gardeners of Seattle Tilth

DVDs

A Hole in a Fence

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Food-Themed Art by Somerville Students

The K-6 students and the art teachers of the Somerville Public Schools have produced a beautiful array of food-themed art that is now on exhibit in the auditorium of the Central Library. It will be here through the end of April, so please stop in and have a look at their wonderful work. There will be a reception on Tuesday, April 10th at 3:00 p.m., and the public is invited to meet the artists, their parents/guardians, and their art teachers. We hope you'll be able to come, but in the meantime, here's a preview of this special, and delicious-looking exhbit! Click on each picture to see a bigger image.

Got Farm?

Reading Farm City may have sparked an interest in becoming an urban farmer yourself, but unlike Novella Carpenter, you probably don't have a vacant lot down the street that seemingly never gets developed. However, even those with the least space have some options. Lifehacker and Apartment Therapy have some tips on growing vegetables in window boxes. Recently I ordered a new book for SPL's collection: Fruit Trees in Small Spaces, a guide to growing fruit trees in containers (or a backyard, if you have one). Currently on the shelf we have titles such as The Edible Container Garden: Growing Fresh Food in Small Spaces, Container Gardening for Dummies, and Plant Parenthood for Urban Gardeners.

If would rather have a traditional garden plot and you don't have a backyard, get in touch with Jim Boyd of Somerville Community Gardens. He'll be happy to talk to you about how to get on a waiting list for any of the SCG plots which are located throughout the city. Unfortunately, waiting lists for the community gardens can be long, but the good news is that the City keeps adding more gardens in an effort to meet the demand. You can reach Jim at boyd@fas.harvard.edu or at 617 -201-1680.

N.B.: On April 22 at 1 p.m. Boyd and Head Children's Librarian Cathy Piantigini will lead a discussion of the award-winning children's book SeedFolks, a novel about an urban garden that makes a community out of a group of strangers.

If your gardening ambitions go beyond mere plants, check with City Hall. One of the few explicit mentions of farm animals in City Ordinances is part a of Section 3-4, which states, "No person shall allow any domestic fowl, swine, goat, sheep, ox, cow, horse, or other grazing animal, owned by him or her or in his or her charge or control, to go at-large or to graze in or upon any of the streets, parks, commons, public grounds or lands of the city." That at least implies it's legal to raise livestock in Somerville.

Just keep them out of Foss Park. Or any park for that matter (and yes, that includes the dog park on Summer Street).

Preview of Somerville Cooks

Our community cookbook is almost ready! Here's a teaser:

Scheduling Update

A few changes have been made to the Somerville Reads events calendar. Here's the latest:

March 31st-April 30, with reception on April 10th @ 3 pm—Exhibit of food-themed art by elementary school children from Somerville Public Schools. Central Library

April 4th @ 7 pm—Potluck with a mystery theme. Central Library

April 5th @ 7 pm—Discussion of Farm City led by Jessie Banhazl of Green City Growers. Central Library

April 11th @ 7 pm—Community Storytelling Open Mike Night. Central Library

April 14th @ 2 pm—Stone Soup. Central Library

April 17th @ 7 pm—Discussion of Seed Folks for kids ages 9 to 12 led by Cathy Piantigini, Supervisor of Somerville Public Library's Children's Services. Central Library

April 21st @ 1 pm—Somerville Reads Celebration, including music by the Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library, a community potluck—bring a dish to share (please list ingredients) , vote for your favorite dish, maybe win a prize!—and the official debut of our new community cookbook. Central Library

April 22nd @ 1 pm—Discussion of Seed Folks led by Jim Boyd, Head Coordinator for Somerville Community Gardens, and Cathy Piantigini. Walnut Street Community Garden.

April 25th @ 7 pm—Discussion of Farm City led by Somerville Public Library librarian Kevin O'Kelly. Sherman Café, 257 Washington St.

Schedule of Events Finalized

Slowly but surely, Somerville Reads 2012 has come together. For a downloadable .pdf of all events, click here. More information on all of these events will be coming soon, so please check back!

Recipes Wanted for Community Cook Book

One of our most exciting projects for Somerville Reads 2012 is the creation of a community cook book! Nothing brings people together quite like food, so we're asking all of our neighbors to share some favorite recipes. Maybe you have a specialty that people always want you to bring to parties, or a recipe for something that the kids ask you to make over and over. Or it might be a treasured family recipe from your culture, or a favorite that features local ingredients. Whatever you choose, we're looking forward to your contribution. We don't know if we'll be able to print all of the recipes - it depends on how many submissions we get and whether there are duplicates - but we'll use as many as we can. If you didn't invent the recipe yourself, please make sure that you include credit where it's due (ie: "found this recipe in my mother's old Fanny Farmer" or "clipped this out of the Globe Sunday magazine years ago".)

There are three ways to submit a recipe:

• drop it off at any Somerville Public Library location, care of Ellen Jacobs or

• e-mail it to ejacobs@minlib.net or

• mail it to:
  Somerville Public Library
  79 Highland Avenue
  Somerville, MA 02143
  Attention: Ellen Jacobs

The deadline for submitting recipes is March 1st.

Once we've compiled all of the recipes, we're going to print copies of the cook book and sell them at our kickoff event, a potluck meal at the Central Library on Saturday, March 31st beginning at 1:00 p.m. We hope that people will bring lots of the dishes featured in the cookbook, but anything you'd like to contribute will be welcome! (Please make sure to list the ingredients so that people with allergies or other food restrictions can be informed.) Everyone who comes will have a chance to vote for their favorite dish, and five lucky winners will receive prizes of gift certificates donated by local businesses that are sponsoring the event: Dave's Fresh Pasta, Guru, Highland Kitchen, India Palace, and Sherman Café. Proceeds from the sale of the cook books will go toward future programming at the Libraries.

So what are you waiting for - send in your recipe today!

Somerville Reads 2012

The book for this year's Somerville Reads is Farm City, writer Novella Carpenter's engaging account of starting and running a farm on a vacant lot in Oakland. The book will be a starting point for a city-wide discussion of food: what we eat, why we eat and what should we eat? We'll talk about what it means to eat sustainably in an urban area in the Northeast.

There will also be a strong children's component to Somerville Reads this year. We'll be having two discussions of Paul Fleischman's book Seedfolks, a program based on the folktale Stone Soup, and an exhibit of food-themed art by elementary school students. More details on all of this will be coming soon.

Our kickoff event will start at 1 pm on March 31 at the Somerville Central Library, 79 Highland Avenue. We're having a potluck (so bring one of your favorite dishes) and music by the Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library. We'll also hold a vote on the potluck's best dishes, and the winning cooks will receive gift certificates donated by local restaurants, including Highland Kitchen, Dave's Fresh Pasta, India Palace, Guru and Sherman Cafe. The following week the Mystery Book Club invites everyone to participate in a potluck of dishes inspired by their favorite mystery books, and SPL will host a discussion of Farm City led by Jessie Banzahl of Green City Growers. SPL will also host its own version of The Moth Radio Hour with a community storytelling event (all stories must be food-themed) on April 11.

To recap, the first Somerville Reads events:

Saturday, Mar. 31, 1 p.m.: Kickoff
Wednesday, April 4, 7 p.m.: Mystery Potluck
Thursday, April 5th, 7 p.m.: Discussion of Farm City led by Jessie Banzahl
Wednesday, April 11, 7 p.m.: Community Storytelling
Saturday, April 14, 2 p.m.: Stone Soup
Tuesday, April 17th, 7 p.m.: Discussion of Seedfolks for kids ages 9-12

The events listed above are all taking place at the Central Library, but some of our later events will be in other locations - we'll keep you posted. Stay tuned for further details. In the meantime, relax and enjoy some music: