Category Archives: Events

Event- CSA Presentation

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A few weeks ago in class we were introduced to Brian from Lowcountry Local First. He shared the idea of “CSAs” to us. I also recently had the opportunity to create a presentation with my internship with MUSC Sustainability on CSAs available in the Lowcountry! I will link the presentation below if you want to watch me in action!
So, what is a CSA? CSA is an acronym for Community Supported Agriculture, where members of the community purchase a “share” of a farm in order to support a local farmer. In return, the farmer gives the community member fresh produce that was grown directly from the farm.
CSA’s are a great way to support local agriculture while getting extremely fresh produce, sometimes even straight to your door. With a CSA, you are subscribing to a produce box which you can customize to your needs. Many farms have various sizes and time ranges for their boxes. While most CSAs are fruit and vegetable focused, there are even a few in the Lowcountry that provide meat and fish like Abundant Seafood!
CSA’s are sustainable for many reasons. First, you are supporting local farmers! This keeps local economy thriving and makes you feel good about where your money is going. Second, you know what’s going into your food. You are able to visit the place that your food is being grown and see the care going towards it. Third, your food will be traveling much less than produce grown in a grocery store, which is a big contender of pollution. Lastly, you are getting food at the peak of its freshness. Sure, you may not be getting your favorite berries in the middle of summer, but you will be getting the most incredible tomatoes at peak freshness!
Two of my favorite CSAs that I researched were Compost in my Shoe and Hudson Family Farm Bounty Box. Compost in my Shoe has an extensive list of drop-off areas, along with many add-on items to their already large boxes! These add-on items include honey and eggs straight from their farms as well. The Hudson Family Farm Bounty Box also has a ton of options for how big of a box you may want!
If you would like more information on CSAs or would like a recommendation on what share would suit you and your budget best, please do not hesitate to reach out!

Chocolate Yummm

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For this blog post I wanted to write about my experience at Meatless Monday! I had never been to to Marty’s place and didn’t know what to expect. They had set up a presentation in the corner of the corner of the eating area with Bethany Nunn, chocolatier as the main speaker. Before she spoke a couple guest speakers spoke of upcoming events and sustainability opportunities. I chose this presentation to go to because I have honestly loved chocolate and candy all my life and always have had interest in the process of making good, real ingredient sweets. When Bethany stood to speak I became even more excited, she was a tall, beautiful young women who also loved sweets and creativity just like me. Originally I imagined a women in her 60’s coming to talk about chocolate in possibly a boring way but in reality it was a women very relatable to me. She first started out talking about what drove her towards chocolatier and how it evolved into actually making the chocolate herself in house. Bethany went on to tell the story of how chocolate is made step by step from receiving the cocoa bean from sustainable farms and then roasting them, de shelling them, and then grinding down the cacao down to then be able to add ingredients to make it a decadent chocolate. Being a chocolatier means just adding the ingredients to the cacao to make unique chocolate. She took it a step further by processing the raw ingredients herself. She spoke of how someday she hope to be able to grow the cocoa locally to become totally self sustaining. The weather conditions just aren’t right to be successful at the moment. Green houses may be her solution to that problem.

Something else that Bethany does different than other chocolate makers is she creates a no waste zone with her work. When making chocolate you don’t use the whole bean but just a small amount, so to be innovative she used the sort of shell or husk to produce and sell her own tea. I thought this was a wonderful idea, not only is she using eco friendly methods but she is also making pure profit off of this new invention using the “unwanted” part of the cocoa bean.

Throughout the presentation She passed out things to try including the roasted cacao beans (which were pretty disgusting) as well as pure, no sugar added chocolate (also pretty gross) and then a couple of flavors of her chocolate. She explained how sensitive chocolates are to their surroundings and how a piece of lavender chocolate that I just ate was only flavored by sitting in a room next to the lavender flower for a certain amount of time. That was so interesting to me because it was so full of flavor. I was really glad I went to this talk for it ended up being much more exciting and interesting than I had thought. She showed that with not much extra effort one can really make a business sustainable and friendly to our planet, we need more business owners like Bethany.

A whole lot of ‘Junk’ that you’d probably like to see

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The Charleston Music Hall has said to be set to screen the plastic pollution activist documentary “Junk” at the end of April in 2018.

As many people know, and as we all know by talking about pollution in our class, there is A LOT of junk in our oceans and clearly, it’s not getting any better. Dr. Marcus Eriksen, an international plastic pollution expert, wrote a book all about this oceanic junk titled, Junk Raft: An Ocean Voyage and a Rising Tide of Activism to Fight Plastic Pollution. The book’s content relays just what the title describes it to convey: a man, which is Eriksen, is on a journey through the ocean and is buoyed only on a raft that is actually made out of the plastic junk found within our seas.

The film itself is about a 27-minute long documentary based on Eriksen’s book and was filmed while he and several others were floating for 88 days on a raft made out of 15,000 plastic bottles in the North Pacific Gyre.

“In the Spring of 2008, 3 marine scientists built a raft from 15,000 plastic bottles, 30 sailboat masts, and a Cessna 310 aircraft fuselage. We launched on June 1st, beginning an adventure from Long Beach, California to Hawaii. We ran out of food, outran 3 hurricanes, and met a female rower in the middle of the ocean. It was an amazing adventure to bring attention to the rising plague of plastic waste in our ocean.” – Eriksen

You can watch the film at the Charleston Music Hall, which is located at 37 John Street, on Sunday, April 29th at 6:30 p.m. Tickets will only be $8 and after the film there will be a panel discussion with Eriksen himself! Others on the panel will also include Chris Jones, who is the film’s director, and Anna Cummins, who’s another leader in the ocean plastic pollution movement.

James Cameron, a filmmaker and deep ocean explorer, describes Junk as an “adventure far from shore, the spirit of exploration, and the fight to save our oceans — all in a gripping narrative that is also a parable for our time.” I highly recommend everyone planning to take a break from studying during finals week to go out and see this film. I will more than likely be there, so we can all be involved in the panel discussions together! 🙂

This is a short trailer to show what the film will be like:

Weeds, Dirt, and Dixie Plantation

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Planting Day at Dixie

 

Did you know that The College of Charleston has a Sustainable Agriculture Program?

Did you know that The College of Charleston’s Sustainable Agriculture Program has three downtown urban gardens AND a two-acre student garden at Dixie Plantation in Ravenelle, SC?

I know what you are thinking, “Where is Ravenelle and why would I ever go there?”

As far as proximity goes, it is a bit of a drive from The College of Charleston’s downtown campus, 18.6 miles to be exact. But the good news is that if you are lacking in a vehicle or in motivation to make the drive then the Sustainable Agriculture Program will happily partner you up with fellow students to carpool out the plantation and trust me it is worth it.

When you first turn on to the dirt road at Dixie Plantation you start to get excited. Big old trees line the driveway and the occasional houses and businesses that were visible before now almost completely disappear. This is where you start to get an idea of the scale of the property, 881 acres, and the remote positioning that preserves the land’s integrity and beauty. About halfway down the driveway, you pass the original gates and the hall of angel oak trees that used to line the path to the original home.

Image result for dixie plantation

A couple turns and gates later you arrive at the student gardens. Complete with a custom gate and more than six beds for planting, the student garden at Dixie Plantation is the perfect environment for any student looking to relieve some stress and grow some vegetables on a historic Charleston property. Lucky for you there is an event at the property almost monthly, weekly during the busy season. At the garden, students focus on growing a variety of leafy greens and vegetables that are harvested and sold to the South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Hospital. Talk about all the good vibes, your plants get to feed the sick and recovering sea turtles!

Aside from the garden, the Sustainable Agriculture Program hosts workshops and Expos in their newly built research facility on the property. In the past, they have hosted honey bee expos with the Charleston Bee Keeper Association, composting workshops, and other education events. They are also there almost every Saturday if you just have some free time and would like to help in the garden.

That is what my husband and I did! We woke up early, put on some comfortable clothes, and drove out to Dixie Plantation. We met up with Sean Dove and friends on a chilly Saturday morning to participate in the Dixie Planting Day. We were assigned a bed and were provided with tools to clear out weeds and debris from the soil so that it could be planted in the next few days. We were cold and our noses were running but we had so much fun. After we cleared our bed we took a walk through the grounds and learned a bit about the history of the plantation. It was a Saturday morning well spent.

 

So if you are thinking, “Wow! I want to grow veg for the sea turtles!” or maybe just “I would like to know more about these Sustainable Agriculture programs. ” Then you should reach out to Abbie Cain at caina@cofc.edu and request to be added to the email list.

Hope to see you all out in the garden!

 

 

http://dixieplantation.cofc.edu

http://mes.cofc.edu/sustainable-agriculture-program/index.php

Oyster Restoration Activity

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My teammates and I have committed to several community service opportunities. One of the events involved an oyster project with the South Carolina Oyster Restoration and Enhancement (SCORE) program at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR). This event was split up into two parts: oyster bagging and reef construction. Oyster bagging took place during the fall of 2017, while the reef construction occurred in the spring of 2017. The goals of this program are to initiate oyster restoration efforts, educate citizens of the value oysters have on our ecosystem, and to influence the higher-ups in hopes of better habitat protection as well as better restoration funding. Not only do oyster reefs provide a habitat for marine life and restoration of the oyster population, they may also prohibit nearby shoreline erosion which is one factor in coastal climate impacts. Another benefit of oyster reefs on the shoreline is water filtration and coastal flood prevention. After a short introduction the team was taken to a huge pile of oyster shells and given gloves, buckets, shovels, and net-like bags. As we paired off, one person was to hold the bag steady while their partner filled it ¾ of the way with shells. The bags were tied and loaded onto a truck. Each partner took turns with the shoveling until the entire pile of oyster shells was gone which took about 2 hours. We created over 200 oyster bags that day and were invited back for the second task in the springtime due to high oyster recruitment heights in the warmer months. The second event took place at Wappoo Cut Landing. As a team we lined up across from each other as we unloaded a truck filled with oyster bags. Like an assembly line we tossed each bag down the line to be loaded onto a boat. Once the boat had an adequate amount of bags a group of 7 people loaded onto the boat and were taken about 0.5 miles away from the dock to unload the bags onto the shoreline. There were 5 boat trips in total each taking a different group of people to the shoreline. At the shoreline, each group would line up along the water as each bag was tossed to the end and placed on the muddy shoreline. Several slips, scrapes, and falls took place during the process but with great teamwork we managed to construct an oyster reef. This oyster restoration event served as a great team bonding activity and shows how much we can get done by working together. The same goes for the community as a whole. We can help improve the environment if we all contribute to the many environmental practices such as recycling, decreasing land and water pollution, decreasing land degradation/deforestation, and cutting back on the many resources that we take advantage of. Aside from teamwork, we were reminded that marine life has its own connection of systems that must be restored in order to sustain life. Without reefs the surrounding marine species have lost essential food and shelter which in turn results in less marine species, oysters and fish included. Lack of oysters can result in unfiltered water and less seafood for humans. Likewise, reef less shores make the shore more susceptible to erosion meaning less land for humans.
The track team will be returning to DNR to participate in this event again tomorrow morning. I will post follow-up pictures/videos below.