Earthworms

Herbalist, artist, vegetable farmer, wife and mother - and author - Crystal Stevens has embodied her Earth-loving knowledge and perspective in a bounteous new book: GROW CREATE INSPIRE, Crafting a Joyful Life of Beauty and Abundance (New Society Press, 2016).

Crystal empowers the reader to dance the path to sustainable, resilient, healthy living! She provides practical advice on gardening, foraging, DIY natural household and beauty recipes, simple seed to table meals, preserving the harvest - and more. Her personal stories color this book with a rainbow of gracious values.

With her husband Eric Stevens, Crystal has nourishing Earthworms host Jean Ponzi for the past three growing seasons, as farmers of the LaVista CSA in Godfrey, IL. Her work has been feeding this show's perspective!

Music: For Michael, performed by Brian Curran at KDHX, December 2015.

Book Release Party! Sunday December 4, Old Bakery Beer in Alton IL (3-6 pm)

Find "Farmer Crystal" in: Mother Earth News and Feast, Permaculture and The Healthy Planet Magazines.

Where can you go to have some fun, close to home or just hours away, with the whole family or your pals, maybe catch some history, for sure get outdoors and enjoy NATURE . . . for free? In any of Missouri's 88 (and counting) state parks and historic sites.

Missouri is a national leader in providing nature-based public benefits, in no small part because a modest tax has supported our state park system for over 30 years. The Parks, Soils and Clean Water sales tax levies 1/10 of 1% of sales and uses these funds to manage our parks - and support farmers and landowners statewide through Soil & Water Conservation District services. Amendment 1 brings this tax up for another renewal cycle on November 8. Why consider supporting it?

Hear the vivid, diverse and compelling story of Missouri State Parks from the system's director, Bill Bryan, with the Dept. of Natural Resources, and from Heather Navarro, Executive Director of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

Music: Lime House Blues, performed live at KDHX by the great Del McCoury, August, 2013. Thanks to Josh Nothum, Earthworms engineer (and budding State Park explorer)

Pictured: Locations of Missouri State Parks, Elephant Rocks State Park

Historian and author Jill Jonnes digs in to science, social benefits, culture, data and leafy lore in her new book Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape (Penguin, 2016).

Jonnes tells us tree stories: from the inspiring Survivor Tree of New York's Ground Zero - which is actually an invasive species - to the arborists who branched out and developed data that prove the practical and dollar values of trees in times of city budget cuts. Jonnes' meticulous research and narrative flair make the strong case for community investment in trees, especially in an era when cities everywhere are taking an axe to budgets. Trees yield high ROI, in bio- and other DIVERSE ways.

Music: Big Piney Blues - performed live by Brian Curran at KDHX, March 2015.

THANKS to Earthworms engineer, Josh Nothum.

Related Earthworms Conversations: Backyard Woodland - August 2016

"City of Tress" Film Portrays Jobs, Nature, Humans, Hope - November 2015

The ABCs of R! R! R! will help every resident recycle - easily.

In the City of St. Louis, it's Brightside, our long-serving beautification agency, now educating residents and bringing resources to community events. Brightside's recycling specialists Elysia Musumeci and Jessica Freiberger and volunteer recycling ambassador Richard Bax recently went door-to-door in two city neighborhoods, to answer residents' questions and distribute home bins in a pilot effort to boost recycling participation. What do people want to know to make this most fundamental Green practice work? What kinds of issues do city recycling advocates face? A terrific new website, STLCityRecycles.com, and this Earthworms conversation explain it all for you! Check out their lively social media posts and the Brightside website too! Music: Magic in Threes, performed live at KDHX by Trinity Way, December 2011

THANKS to Josh Nothum and Andy Coco, Earthworms ace engineers.

Few things in the "Green Space" get as wonky as energy policy - or get as popular when utility bills can start shrinking.

Players in the Energy Sector are utility companies (and their shareholders), government regulators, enviro-advocates, municipalities, businesses of all kinds - and us Average Joes who use and pay for energy. Josh Campbell, Executive Director of the Missouri Energy Initiative, works this sector behind the scenes, negotiating for benefits that range from energy efficiency financing options to getting more solar and wind power into the system.

This Earthworms conversation covers state energy policy dynamics, PACE financing, responses in Missouri and Illinois to the U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan, energy efficiency efforts in the Midwest region - and the kinds of relationships helping our region move from reliance on "Legacy Fuels" toward resilient, diverse, clean energy systems - in ways that all can afford. Energizing!

October 4-5 in St. Louis: Midwest Energy Policy Conference

Music: Deep Gap performed by Marisa Anderson at KDHX-St. Louis, May 2014

THANKS Josh Nothum, Earthworms engineer.

Related Earthworms Conversations: All-Electric America? - August 2016From the Pipeline with Filmaker Caitlin Zera - January 2016

These forested acres in far west St. Louis County have long beckoned visitors from around this region: as the famed Gilberg Perennial Farms from the 1980s until early 2000s, and now as a new creative hub, Wildwood Green Arts.

Proprietor - or should we say Potter and Host? - Doug Gilberg has rekindled his lifelong love of working with clay as a deeply satisfying way to connect with nature and one's fellow humans. He opens his family place to learners and guess, in a new iteration of his earlier work growing and popularizing perennial and native garden plants. Both the calm and joy of this enterprise is clear as Doug talks about it with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi.

Wildwood Green Arts is open for creative use, with spacious new studio facilities including wheels, kilns, hand-building spaces and abundant surrounding natural beauty. From regular Coached Open Studio days to special classes to Date Nights, let this tactile medium lure you to newly experience or more deeply delve into the focused sensuality called Ceramics - in the bonus environment of a very intentional Creative Community.

Music: For Michael by Brian Curran, performed live at KDHX, December 2015

Thanks to Earthworms' engineer, Josh Nothum

Everybody eats. So local food production could become an economic engine, with a modest carbon footprint and potentially huge community benefits. And gardens rooted in communities of faith can nourish the kind of massive root system - of leadership, partnership, entrepreneurship, stewardship - needed to give this ship's engine good Green steam.

Earthworms guest Sylvester Brown Jr. is putting these synergies to work in The Sweet Potato Project, a St. Louis enterprise since 2012 that empowers urban, disadvantaged youth to grow strong futures for themselves and their 'hoods by cultivating - YAMS! Brown will keynote a free public event on Tuesday Sept 20 that spotlights opportunity for faith congregations to GARDEN as a means to community service. Earthworms guest Gail Wechsler is a coordinator of this event - Greening Your Community, Saving the Planet One Garden at a Time - and a spokesperson from the Jewish Community Relations Council for the Green organizing power of communities of all faiths.

This event is third in a series of collaborations between the Jewish Environmental Initiative, US Green Building Council-Missouri Gateway Chapter and Missouri Interfaith Power & Light. Register here.

Earthworms Engineers are Josh Nothum and Andy Coco - thanks!

Music: Butter II performed live at KDHX by Ian Ethan Case, March 2016

Related Earthworms Conversation: St. Louis Food Policy Coalition - December 2015

Her t-shirt says MODERN FARMER. Architect turned Agri-Innovator Mary Ostafi is one, in spades. Her vision, hard work and business savvy continues to grow St. Louis first urban farm on top of a downtown building: Urban Harvest STL.

When Earthworms last talked with Mary, in June 2015, she was just digging in for her Food Roof's first, short growing season. She had blown through the roof of a Kickstarter campaign and secured a big stormwater management grant and was planting the seeds of her enterprising dream firmly atop the second story of a warehouse building in the city's core. This year, she and her largely volunteer team are fixin' to post achievement gains well over that first season's impressive growth of 1,033 pounds of food produced from 62 varieties of plants, with 60% of it donated to further Urban Harvest's mission to "Grow Food Where You Live!" Mary Ostafi's timing was perfect for planting her non-profit idea firmly into the living soil of both the sustainable food and food justice movements that are sweeping St. Louis and the country overall. Urban Harvest works in partnership with social service leaders like the St. Louis Food Policy Coalition, St. Patrick Center, St. Louis Metro Market and more, and has tapped into the farmer training program of EarthDance Farms to create one job in the farm's first year, and significantly boost the profile of all this collaborative energy. Plus eating WELL - and hosting parties! Check out the Food Roof as a volunteer, any Saturday morning - and get your tix while they last for RAISE THE ROOF, the first Urban Harvest fund-raiser on Thursday Sept 22 - which happily also happens to be the Autumnal Equinox.

Earthworms salutes you, Mary Ostafi - YOU GROW GREEN GIRL!

Thanks to Josh Nothum, Earthworms engineer.

Music: Redwing by Currycorn - performed live at KDHX March, 2011

Related Earthworms Conversations:

Farming on a Downtown Roof - June 30, 2015

St. Louis Metro Market - Grocery Store in a Metro Bus! - June 15, 2015

Urban Agriculture Guide: New Tool for City Farmers - June 7 2016

Fruit or Vegetable? To clear up the question in this interview: a fruit is a seed-bearing structure that develops from the ovary of a flowering plant, whereas vegetables are all other plant parts, such as roots, leaves and stems. BUT there's overlap, thank you tomatoes - and always something else to learn.

Given the persistence of fossil fuels, it's tough to imagine how Ready KiloWatt and his gang can power an optimistic, realistic new era. And with ever-more gizmos guzzling juice, does energy efficiency have a prayer?

YES! say former utility CEO and energy policy authority S. David Freeman and today's Earthworms guest, energy journalist Leah Y. Parks. They are co-authors of a great new book, All-Electric America - A Climate Solution and the Hopeful Future (2016, Solar Flare Press). This book is a terrific summary of clean energy options, clearly explaining solar to storage, economics to electric cars - backed by current examples from U.S. cities, businesses, utilities and points of techno-evolution.

Dave Freeman remains optimistic after 7+ decades of energy work, as an architect of the US EPA during the Nixon era, as L.A.'s Deputy Mayor for Energy and Environment, and as CEO of utilities in Texas, California and New York. Leah Parks represents their research and writing partnership with clear enthusiasm for the many ways clean electrical technology is HERE, and how even utility evolution inertia is being overcome, in examples like Vermont's Green Mountain Power and Oregon's Pacific Power.

Could America's clean energy future be plugged in and powering up right now? This Earthworms conversation says, energetically, YES!

Music: Dark Matter, recorded live at KDHX by Mad Titans, March 2010 Thanks to Andy Coco, Earthworms live-wire engineer.

More than half of U.S. forested acres belong to private citizens, in plots vast and small. Over 10 million Americans collectively own 420 million acres of our nation's woods. You may be one of them - or could be!

Catskills region forester Josh Vanbrakle has compiled a wealth of know-how for individual forest stewards in his new book, Backyard Woodland - How to Maintain and Sustain Your Trees, Water and Wildlife (The Countryman Press, 2016). Josh's love of the woods rings through this Earthworms conversation, as he shares his expertise in evaluating woodland health, getting families involved in ownership, recruiting neighboring eyes and ears to help you oversee your land's well-being and making some of your living by "doing well by your land."

From growing your enjoyment of nature to farming your forest - in city, suburbs or countryside - these ideas can work for you, and for woodlands you could come to know.

Music: "Frankie & Johnny" performed by Brian Curran, live at KDHX-St. Louis.

Related Earthworms Conversations: A Tribute to Leo Drey (June 2, 2015) - honoring Missouri's largest private landowner whose untutored diligence is transforming forest management conventions in universities and government agencies across the U.S.