Fifth Annual Relay for Clean Air

This year’s Relay for Clean Air, organized by the clean air group Canary Coalition, will take place on Saturday, August 23. The relay takes participants 100 miles, ending on Biltmore Avenue in downtown Asheville. The distance will be broken into 38 segments, between which the “Clean Air Now” banner will be passed. The urgent theme of this year’s Relay is opposition to Duke Energy’s planned 800-megawatt coal-burning power plant at Cliffside in Rutherford County. For information about the Relay and how to participate, email info@canarycoalition.org, call 828-631-3447, or visit www.canarycoalition.org.


Chickens and the City

Many citizens are interested in changing the existing Asheville city chicken ordinance, which currently requires 150 feet from a neighbor’s home for a permit, to make it easier to have chickens within the city limits. Those supporting this effort, like the group Asheville City Chickens, cite the positives of owning chickens, including a local solution to the high cost of food. In July, animal control held a public hearing concerning animal ordinances, and a draft model ordinance, which will be released for public comment, is expected soon. “I hope readers might write them in support of easing the chicken ordinance,” Ashevillian Jim Barton of Smith Mill Creek Permaculture School tells New Life Journal. “My understanding is that it will then go before Asheville City Council, and I hope readers might write them, too.” You can visit www.ashevillenc.gov for city council contact information. To join the listserv devoted to discussing this topic, visit http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ashevillecitychickens. According to Jenny Mercer, cofounder of Asheville City Chickens, support for backyard flocks to date “has been so overwhelming that we expect to expand our mission from advocacy to information sharing, neighborhood coop tours and other chickeny good times.”


WNC Sets Farm to School Example

In late July, Asheville hosted the Southeast Region Farm to School Conference, which connected farm to school participants from Kentucky to Florida and brought in experts from other regions to speak about farm to school achievements and possibilities in our area. Farm to school programs work with farmers, educators and communities to get local food into cafeterias and encourage farm field trips, experiential nutrition education and school gardens. Western North Carolina-based Growing Minds, the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project’s (ASAP) farm to school program, hosted the conference. Growing Minds is now the lead agency in the Southeast for the National Farm to School Network. ASAP is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to create and expand regional community-based and integrated food systems that are locally owned and controlled, environmentally sound, economically viable and health-promoting. To learn more about Growing Minds, visit www.growing-minds.org. To learn more about ASAP, visit www.asapconnections.org.

Back to New Life Journal..