Freezing maintains the natural color, fresh flavor, and high nutritive value of fresh foods. The objective is to bring foods to the frozen state quickly. When properly done, fruits and vegetables are more like fresh than when preserved by any other method. Best of all, freezing vegetables and fruit is fast and easy. You don’t need a lot of time or years of experience to preserve garden-fresh fruits and vegetables. Organized in a friendly, food-by-food format, readers will find “The Beginner’s Guide to Preserving Food at Home” by Janet Chadwick an invaluable reference. Freezing, drying, canning, and storing instructions are available for each vegetable, fruit, and herb, and in many cases, several methods for freezing fruits and vegetables or canning food are described.
Jersey-Friendly Yards
Did you know that you can rethink your lawn, create a Jersey-friendly yard and reduce your environmental impact? NJ native plants help conserve and filter water, provide habitat for native wildlife, protect soil resources, and reduce the costs and environmental impacts associated with fertilizers and pesticides.This year’s Jersey-Friendly Yards conference will be on Saturday, October 19th from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Ocean County College’s Gateway Building in Toms River, New Jersey. There will be two fantastic featured speakers and “choose a workshop” sessions to learn how to put your Jersey-Friendly Yard into practice! Fall is the perfect time to add native plants to your landscape and New Jersey growers will bring a great selection of native plants ready for fall planting.
Girls and Seaweed
"2040" is not a sophisticated film, nor is it original, the ideas and arguments all having been developed by others. It’s not meant to be either of those things – engaging, persuasive and urgent, it’s an exercise in what you might call muscular hope. Filmamker, Damon Gameau's eco-commentary operates on a knife edge: if you’re critical of government policy, you’re derided as an Eeyore; constructive, you’re a nutty utopian. Gameau dances the middle path, outlining the intractable issue - carbon from transport, waste, farming, energy and ignorance - before focusing exclusively on two surprising solutions that deploy existing technology and address the climate crisis - things that are doable.
No Mows Blossom
Merchantville’s Green Team planted two wildflower gardens last October in the town's two "no mow" zones. These natural gardens and pollinator habitats are located on the lawns adjacent to the bike path trail along West Chestnut Avenue started sprouting lots of black-eyed susan this week and we can't wait to see what else will blossom this summer. These areas provide an excellent habitat for pollinators such as native bumble bees. These zones allow plants to flower which in turn provides a place for pollinators to stop and have a meal.
Ode to an Oak
Last month, the Salem Oak, the tallest white oak tree in New Jersey, toppled within the grounds of Salem Friends Meeting. In its honor, Meeting member Jessica Waddington wrote this obituary of the beloved county landmark. On Thursday, June 6 at around 6:00 in the evening, the stately Salem Oak lay down, after standing tall for an estimated 600 years. She was at home, in the Salem Friends Burial Ground on Broadway, in the small historic town of Salem, N.J. She had battled time, gravity, and Mother Nature for several hundred years, losing several limbs and requiring a great deal of care, before finally succumbing. She was surrounded by her descendants, the town that loved her, and a few hundred deceased Friends, all of whom benefited from her stately bearing, her ongoing endurance, and her deep roots that preceded not only the birth of this nation, but the European settlement of its lands.
Sociologic Sustainability Basics
The median quality of life is perhaps best measured by the readily available access to the basic necessities of life. In its own way, it is a measure of success for the sociological development and a prime indicator of sociological sustainability. There are four keys to improve the median quality of life that are sadly lacking in modern society. These are viable education rather than merely teaching to the test, and including options for vocational and technical training for those people who are less capable of learning in a more scholastic environment; real-world, paying opportunities for those who have received an education; accomplishing this without the creation of a dependency class; and perhaps most important of all, the ability to provide all of this without overly burdening those who are already productive and contributing members within a society or community development.
Bee Loss Highest Yet
Winter hit U.S. honeybees hard with the highest loss rate yet, an annual survey of beekeepers showed. The annual nationwide survey by the Bee Informed Partnership found 37.7% of honeybee colonies died this past winter, nearly 9 percentage points higher than the average winter loss. The survey of nearly 4,700 beekeepers managing more than 300,000 colonies goes back 13 years and is conducted by bee experts at the University of Maryland, Auburn University and several other colleges. Explore the colony loss map and other surveys in NJ.