Ventura County UCCE Coastal Community Development Advisor, Monique Meyers is collaborating with fellow scientists to bring you the following presentation.

The University of California Sea Grant/Cooperative Extension programs and the California Coastal Commission are pleased to offer a basic educational presentation about land use, water quality and low-impact development (LID).

As representatives of the California Water and Land Use Partnership (CalWaLUP), we are members of the National NEMO (Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials) Network and share the organization's goal to educate local decision makers about the link between land use and water resources.  You may be aware of NEMO programs that exist in many other coastal states (http://nemonet.uconn.edu/). Every NEMO program has a different target audience.  Our program focuses on land use planners and local elected officials.

The basic presentation is an hour long with an additional half hour for discussion.  If you are interested in attending a presentation or hosting one at your facility, please contact Monique Myers, D.Env., at UC Cooperative Extension, nicmyers@ucdavis.edu, or Tracy Duffey at the Coastal Commission, tduffey@coastal.ca.gov.

Monique Myers

The 2010 California Small Farm Conference will be held from February 28 to March 2 in San Diego. This year’s theme is, Sustaining our Bounty.

The organizers recognize that small farmers are often the leaders and innovators in our state’s agricultural system. The conference will showcase ideas for these growers to “sustain the progress they have made and find opportunities to continue to diversify, grow, improve and expand their operations”.

Scholarships are available, and applications for the scholarships are due by January 8. More information on the conference, schoraships, and much more can be found on the conference website.

Ventura County UCCE Farm Advisor Ben Faber will be appearing on an upcoming segment of the History Channel’s “Life After People” series. The show peers into the future and portrays how the world will likely change after people disappear. Experts in various fields are interviewed to provide knowledge to help guide the imagination of the writer’s down a likely scenario. This is where Ben comes in.

How will plants change without humans? Ben explains that annuals, especially food sources such as pumpkins, are highly domesticated plants. Over time these plants have been selected for desired characteristics yearly – seeds from pumpkins that meet or exceed the desired characteristics defined by humans are planted the next year to reproduce the highest quality traits. This human selection process changes what might normally be there. Without people involved in the selection process pumpkins will return to a natural/wild selection process. Over time plant characteristics will change as nature selects traits.

The story is different for perennials. Perennials have a longer period to reproduction and tend to be less domesticated. Ben gives the example of Christmas trees. Humans do not use these trees for food, so we have not used selection processes to greatly change the outcome. These types of tress will stay much the same after people are gone. The exception will be trees grown outside of their natural environments. Perennials growing in environments that depend on people to care on them for their survival, for instance providing water, nutrients, or pesticides will not survive without them.

Dr. Ben Faber

Ventura County UCCE Director, Rose Hayden-Smith is passionate about increasing self-sufficiency and nutrition through gardening. In addition to being our director, Rose is currently a Kellogg Fellow. As a Fellow, she is currently working on food policy on a national level. Her tag line is, "A Garden for Everyone.  Everyone in a Garden."

We have a wonderful example of these goals in action right here in Ventura County! Community Roots Garden in Oxnard covers a full acre of ground, and is a wonderful example of what can be accomplished by people working together towards a shared goal.

From their website, “The mission of Community Roots Garden is largely to increase food security, both by providing the harvest to those in need and by empowering the community to grow their own food. Besides growing food we are eager to grow community. We want to help ourselves and others become more self-sufficient and food secure. We want to share our food and share our knowledge about how to grow food. And we invite your involvement.”

Please visit the Community Roots Garden website for inspiration, details and contact information.

More about Rose’s work as a Kellogg Fellow can be found her Victory Grower Blog.

Community Roots Garden

Read below to learn a little about Ventura County Santa Rosa Valley 4-H club. This article was featured in a recent addition of Clover Lines, our 4-H newsletter. This article and others can be found on our website.

by Terri Hargleroad

Santa Rosa Valley club is excited to start a new 4-H year. We are a large and growing club of nearly 100 members. We have projects ranging from cake decorating to pygmy goats to motorcycles to horses.

Our Horse project had a great time at the horse fair and won the barn awards this year. They competed in Western, English and Gymkhana events.

We just returned from the big fair where our members showed their years work in such projects as Photography, Jewelry, Cavies, Lambs, Poultry and much more.

Our quietest meeting of the year was when we had Officer Alvarez from the Ventura County K9 Unit visit us with his dog, Fibi. The kids and adults listened to every word, asked great questions and were allowed to pet Fibi. Fibi did tricks!

We also participate in several community service events throughout the year as a club. We work at Underwood Farms, Operation Gratitude and TOTSOCE. Our kids who are too young to help out with some of the community service help write letters to the troops at Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

We also fill the year with fun activities like potlucks, a Halloween event, an Easter Egg Hunt and a swim party. The end of the year pool party was a blast with swimming,potluck, awards and our send-off to the kids moving on to college.

This year we are adding many more projects - like Fashion Revue, Bicycles, Canning and Interior Design. There are a lot of new skills to learn for each of us.

Happy New 4-H Year. It is going to be great!