Welcome – Bienvenidos
PUENTES’ mission is to spread the knowledge and effective implementation of sustainable technologies and stimulate a creative, cooperative, and positive attitude in disadvantaged communities across the Americas.
Time for a round of ‘It could only happen in Stockton’
Michael Fitzgerald
Frankenmuffin Productions is inviting people to tell their stories of the Calaveras River for a documentary film. Here’s one they probably can’t use.
Dirk Hamilton, a first-rate singer/songwriter, lived here in the 1980s. His Calaveras story happened on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 4, 1988.
“I was walking right by Pershing and UOP on the other (north) side of the Calaveras,” recalled Hamilton, who now lives outside Dallas.
The river by University of the Pacific had dwindled to its deepest channel. In it, “I saw what looked like human form,” Hamilton said, “like a mummy, just wrapped up in some kind of tape that was gray-colored.”
New Agtivist: Meg Paska runs Brooklyn’s first urban farm pop-up
It’s a dreamy combination of hipster clichés: an urban farming-themed pop-up store made of salvaged materials. In Brooklyn. Maybe that’s why, when Hayseed’s Big City Farm Supply opened at the beginning of April, founder Meg Paska thought, “we’re going to get mocked.” But mockery did not ensue; instead, an enthusiastic community response showed that Paska was on to something with this small, seasonal shop catering to the needs of people growing food and raising animals in the city.
Paska, who blogs about her own backyard garden, chicken coop, and beehive at Brooklyn Homesteader, started Hayseed’s with the folks who run Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farm in Queens. The store will be around until early July in a space Paska rented from the design studio Domestic Construction. We chatted with Paska recently about the project.
Click here to read more at Grist.org
I know the perfect proety to do something like this in Stockton, would tie-in very nicely to our work with Boggs Tract Community Farm… community leadership, step up! – Jeremy
Survey says Americans want more fruits and veggies for everyone
If you’ve noticed more carrot-crunching, more orange-peeling, and an abundance of leafy green salads lately, it’s probably not a coincidence. As The Washington Post reported earlier this week, Americans eat more fresh foods than they did five years ago.
The WaPo story was based on a national phone survey conducted by the Kellogg Foundation, which found that the majority of Americans are trying to eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, are shopping at farmers markets at least on occasion, and say they know “a lot or a little about where their fresh fruits and vegetables come from.” These findings are interesting — and they speak to the success of a whole array of efforts to get more of us cooking, examining what we eat, and honing in on the place where healthy and truly delicious foods intersect.
Boggs Tract Community Farm Featured in SJ Magazine
PUENTES was featurued in the San jaoquin Maginze’s annual “green” April issue in a lovely article written by Patricia Kutza:
Click here to read PUENTES’ story on page 79 of the San Joaquin Magazine Digital Edition
For New Yorkers, a farmers market on your phone
BY: Jenny An, GRIST
A community-supported agriculture (CSA) share can be a culinary battle royale. Every other week, it’s you versus a mystery box. No tap outs, no substitutions. Just a bitter melon so fresh, you wouldn’t dare toss it out. And while there’s something to be said for experimentation, sometimes you just want something a little more familiar, something easy to pack for lunch, something the kids will touch. Or maybe you’re just having a mad craving for heirloom radishes?
That’s where Plovgh enters the picture. The online marketplace soft-launched in November 2011, and hopes to offer an alternative to the traditional CSA and farmers market systems by allowing customers to order exactly what and how much they want from local farms while still getting it delivered to their neighborhood. Sites like Local Dirt andLocal Harvest connect online customers to farms, but neither will bring groceries to your neighborhood bar. And while food hubs can distribute food to schools, restaurants, and other groups with big local food needs, Plovgh (pronounced “plow”) brings all those perks to individuals — even those who might only cook once a week.
Click here to read more at Grist.org
Crayfish anyone?
I am convinced that here is huge potential for raising “Crawdads” in urban farms.
They can be fed vegetable waste and hay from the farm, and: “Freshwater crayfish are highly regarded as a delicacy as they are very similar to shrimp or lobster in taste and texture…high protein and low-fat.”
I found a few books about raising Crayfish, it would be worthwhile exploring possibilities for integrating them into a medium-scale aquaponics system:
http://www.rampumps.com/craybook.htm
Deception: Are Eggs Labeled “Free Range” Really Free?
One of the Worst Ways to Eat Eggs
The definitions of “free-range” are such that the commercial egg industry can run industrial farm egg laying facilities and still call them “free-range” eggs, despite the fact that the birds’ foraging conditions are far from what you’d call natural.
True free-range eggs are from hens that roam freely outdoors on a pasture where they can forage for their natural diet, which includes seeds, green plants, insects, and worms.
Large commercial egg facilities typically house tens of thousands of hens and can even go up to hundreds of thousands of hens.
PUENTES Releases 2011 Annual Report
2011 was a great year for PUENTES!
At their annual meeting, the Board of Directors unvieled their 2011 Annual Report.
Click here to download your copy of PUENTES 2011 Annual Report
Successful Farm Work Day Boggs Tract!
Although PUENTES hosted a small crowd at Boggs Tract Community Farm on Saturday, March 10, our volunteers put their noses to the grindstone!
Together we finished building the final group of raised beds for the CSA program, helped families install their irrigation systems in their plots, and worked on the main crop area.
PUENTES family shareholder, Benjamin Jiminez spent the day with Ivan and Jesus helping set up irrigation lines in family plots. 
PUENTES Construction Coordinator Steve Evans installed beds and guided Jeremy and Minh as they put the pieces together. Crop Coordinator Eric Firpo, and Board Chair Janis Zurilgen worked together on the main crop area where we have planted kale, beets, and other crops for our CSA program.
Go team!!!!
Why does the USDA want to feed School Children SLOP?
Pink Slime For School Lunch: Government Buying 7 Million Pounds Of Ammonia-Treated Meat For Meals
Pink slime — that ammonia-treated meat in a bright Pepto-bismol shade — may have been rejected by fast food joints like McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King, but is being brought in by the tons for the nation’s school lunch program.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is purchasing 7 million pounds of the “slime” for school lunches, The Daily reports. Officially termed “Lean Beef Trimmings,” the product is a ground-up combination of beef scraps, cow connective tissues and other beef trimmings that are treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill pathogens like salmonella and E. coli. It’s then blended into traditional meat products like ground beef and hamburger patties.
“We originally called it soylent pink,” microbiologist Carl Custer, who worked at the Food Safety Inspection Service for 35 years, told The Daily. “We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent [to ground beef]. My main objection was that it was not meat.”
Custer and microbiologist Gerald Zernstein concluded in a study that the trimmings are a “high risk product,” but Zernstein tells The Dailythat “scientists in D.C. were pressured to approve this stuff with minimal safety approval” under President George H.W. Bush’s administration. The USDA asserts that its ground beef purchases “meet the highest standard for food safety.”
Bridging Sustainable Communities!
PUENTES
Bridging sustainable communities!
PUENTES 
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