Overrun by tomatoes, corn and peaches? Staying up late baking zucchini breads? Want to eat local and fresh veggies in January? Learn how to can from Stephanie Diehl, an extension agent and canning pro. She will get you ready to can, freeze and even use a pressure cooker.

Plan to come Thursday, Aug. 26, 2010 at 6:30pm at the Temple House of Israel on 15 N. Market St. in downtown Staunton. Email stauntongreen <at> gmail.com with your name and contact info to sign-up.

There was a great article in today’s (Sun. Aug. 15) News Leader about canning and other methods of storing fresh produce. Check it out and then come to this workshop to ensure that your bounty is available all year long.

To sign-up and for more information contact: stauntongreen <at> gmail.com

Need canning supplies? Head over to Young True Value to get set-up.

Don’t forget Green Drinks at 5pm today (Thur. Aug. 12) at the Depot Grille. A casual way to chat, meet folks and talk about all things green. From good jobs and a more secure energy future to healthy, local food, muddy boots and cutting our waste. And, speaking of starting sentences with the word “and” take a look at this great article on all the items you can put in your compost. Like cotton swabs, dryer lint and to-go containers like the ones that Depot Grille uses!

See you at 5pm.

It’s time to pull out the muddy boots, dig out your green blazer and ponder whether corduroy pants match corduroy shirts. That’s right Green Drinks returns on Thursday, Aug. 12 at 5pm at the Depot Grille in the wharf district in downtown Staunton. Enjoy local beer and wine, appreciate the 40 foot long bar saved from the wrecking ball (historic preservation is very “green”), order some Polyface Farms delectables and serendipitously hang out with others interested in seeing Staunton improve our economy through green initiatives. No agendas or speeches–just meeting new people and catching up with old friends.

Can’t finish everything you order? The Depot uses biodegradable take-out containers.

Hope to see you on Aug. 12.

Great article in last Sunday’s Staunton News Leader about local homeowners adding solar installations to their roofs and saving bundles on electricity.  Click here to see it. Later this fall Staunton Green 2020 plans to hold a workshop on how to do residential solar.

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Have you rocked the vote yet and supported Staunton/Augusta Farmers Market in the American Farmland Trust national competition? With 30 acres of farmland being lost in Virginia every day, supporting our local farmers is now more important than ever. In the 10 county Shenandoah Valley region consumers spend $1.2 billion buying food each year, but only $4.3 million of food is sold by farmers directly to consumers. We have the buying power to re-shape the local economy. Learn more here.

Vote today for the Staunton/Augusta Farmers Market and eat local every day.

Every Thursday in July at Live Arts in Charlottesville there will be the one woman show, Cry of the Mountain, a documentary play about Mountaintop Removal in Appalachia, conceived and performed by Adelind Horan.

As described on the Live Arts web site: “This is a wonderful and simple piece of theatre in which Adelind portrays a wide variety of people involved with and affected by Mountaintop Removal in Appalachia. The characters are performed verbatim from interviews she conducted last summer while volunteering with iLoveMountains.org.”

Get more info at Live Arts.

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Don’t miss King Corn this Thursday (6/17) at the Mockingbird Restaurant (123 W. Beverley; Downtown Staunton). Film begins at 7pm, but come early to enjoy a special dinner in the Music Hall featuring food from local farmers (call 540.213.8777 for reservations).

In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from an east coast college, move to the American heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most productive, most subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions, about how we eat — and how we farm.

kingcorn.net has great info and links.

King Corn is part of the local motion film series presented by Transition Staunton Augusta in partnership with Staunton Green 2020.

Get your Staunton Green 2020 bumper sticker, take our “emboiled by Gulf Oil” survey, learn about Green Loans, chat with fine folks  and nosh on some locally sourced food and drink. See you at 5pm at Zynodoa (115 E. Beverley St. – downtown Staunton).

Staunton might seem far away from the Gulf of Mexico, but our dependency on oil is inextricably linked to the millions of gallons of oil gushing into the gulf. The proportions of the Deepwater Horizon environmental and human tragedy grow each day which makes looking at this immense disaster even more overwhelming. Nonetheless, consider viewing this underwater footage from ABC news on the Repower America web site to get a sense of the impact of this gusher.

Commentators locally, like Ed Scerbo, and elsewhere have smartly pointed out that calling the disaster in the gulf a “spill” is misleading. A spill suggests an accident with a finite amount that can be cleaned up. The gusher in the gulf is a result of decades of decisions (and indecisions) and our addiction to oil.

Let’s work locally to reduce our dependence. Use the comments section to identify one or two ways you are going to lessen your use of petroleum.

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