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SOIL Institute

#093 January 2017/Food

Despite difficulties, Pennsylvania farmers are pressing for better practices

Photo courtesy of Laura Deutsch Photography The State of Sustainable Agriculture by Alex Jones While the current trendiness of the farm-to-table movement might lead consumers to believe that the businesses that grow our food are booming, that’s not exactly the case.  Just ask Brooks Miller of North Mountain Pastures in Perry County. Miller and his

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December 29, 2016
9 mins read

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Events happening in and around Philadelphia this w Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend! ➡️ Philly Homegrown First Fridays: Each month, we open our doors for an evening of local love: shop unique, handcrafted goods, meet the makers, and connect with your neighbors. Enjoy complimentary wine, light refreshments, and a vibrant atmosphere where art, plants, and people come together. When: Friday, March 6th (6:00 PM - 9:00 PM) Where: Plant and People 3952 Lancaster Avenue Philadelphia, PA 19104 ➡️ Birding with Philly Queer Birders: It’s been a long winter, so come shake off the cold with queer community and #birdjoy! Join Philly Queer Birders and Audubon Mid-Atlantic as we check out early spring visitors, and perhaps some surprises along the way. When: Saturday, March 7th (9:00 AM - 11:00 AM) Where: The Discovery Center 3401 Reservoir Drive Philadelphia, PA 19121 ➡️ A Journey to Backyard Biodiversity: How do you transform a tangled mess of a backyard and a traditional lawn and into a thriving wildlife oasis? Join native gardening enthusiast Katie Fisk as she shares how she used native plants to turn her own yard into a haven for pollinators and birds. When: Saturday, March 7th (10:00 AM - 11:00 AM) Where: Jenkins Arboretum & Gardens 631 Berwyn Baptist Road Devon, PA 19333 #philadelphia #philly #phillysupportphilly #eventsinphilly #phillyevents #phillyevent #philadelphiaevents
Across the nation, more and more youth are reachin Across the nation, more and more youth are reaching for a bicycle for recreation and as a means of transportation. In fact, the advocacy group PeopleforBikes found in a 2024 survey that ridership for children ages 3 to 17 increased from 46% to 56%, reversing a decline. And on March 14 and 15 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the 15th Philadelphia Bike Expo (PBE) is working to instill cycling confidence in young people with its Kids Arena, aiming to build on that upward trend. The kids riding arena features separated courses with skill and safety stations for a full range of experience levels. The program will be overseen by Sam Pearson, a lifelong cyclist and the Healthy Communities program manager at Pennsylvania Downtown Center. “It’s a skills course,” Pearson says. “We’re trying to get them to show how well they follow the signs and interact with each other as they’re circulating.” The course “road,” as in years past, is halved by a center line, and riders must navigate cones and each other. There is also a roundabout where riders have to obey traffic signs, take turns and decide when to go straight or proceed around the traffic circle, Pearson says. There will be separate stations for riders to focus on a specific skill, and others where they must combine those skills in practice. Pearson says there are numerous benefits to these kinds of courses, called traffic gardens. Beyond balance work, she says children can work on gliding, braking, staying in their lane and responding to road signs. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Dawn Kane 📸 Photo courtesy of Diana Steif #philadelphia #safestreets #bikesafety #bicyclesafety #phillybikeexpo #bikephl
Amanda Parezo isn’t your typical bike lane advocat Amanda Parezo isn’t your typical bike lane advocate. For one thing, she doesn’t ride a bike. Parezo once loved cycling around Philadelphia. But in 2021, after a game of kickball at Hancock Playground in East Kensington, she was struck in the back by a stray bullet and paralyzed from the waist down. Now, she gets around town using a wheelchair. She rolls from her condo in Old City to her job at Thomas Jefferson University, where she teaches occupational therapy. In a city where sidewalks are often damaged or blocked, Parezo often ends up rolling into a bike lane. But bike lanes, she says, often aren’t free of barriers either. When a vehicle is stopped or parked in the lane, Parezo has to roll into the street, greatly increasing her risk of injury. “I feel like something’s going to happen as soon as I get into the street,” she says. “If it’s nighttime, that makes it exponentially worse, and then I just won’t go out because I’m scared. I’ll just stay home.” ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ + 📸 Jordan Teicher #philadelphia #visionzero #safestreets #accessibilitymatters #accessibilityforall #bikelane
By all accounts, 67-year-old Harry Fenton was a mo By all accounts, 67-year-old Harry Fenton was a model of safe cycling. He used hand signals when he was turning and stopped at every stop sign and red light, even when there wasn’t a car anywhere in sight. To be visible, he wore fluorescent jackets, vests and shirts, and he never left the house without his helmet or fully-charged lights. He found routes that felt safe and then stuck to them. Fenton, in other words, did everything right. But he couldn’t prevent what happened to him on the morning of Sept. 2 while he was riding his bike in Fairmount Park. At the intersection of Belmont Avenue and Avenue of the Republic, a speeding driver struck him and fled. Fenton was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, making him the fourth cyclist killed in Philadelphia last year, and the eighth person killed in a crash on Belmont Avenue in the past six years. Belmont Avenue has been part of Philadelphia’s “High Injury Network” — the 12% of roads that are responsible for 80% of the city’s total fatal and serious road injuries — for years. So why have the dangerous conditions there remained unaddressed? The answer is linked to the nearly decade-long history of Vision Zero, the City’s safe streets initiative. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ + 📸 Jordan Teicher #philadelphia #visionzero #safestreets #bikesafety #bicyclesafety #bikephl
New issue alert! Grid 202 has arrived and with it New issue alert! Grid 202 has arrived and with it comes another set of important stories to tell. Here are just a few of the ones you’ll find in this month’s pages: • The efforts to eradicate traffic deaths in Philadelphia launched in 2016. Ten years in, the City is still far from its goal • Could Philadelphia’s environmental science high school be for sale? • For some undocumented minors living in Philadelphia, making it to the United States is just one step in a long journey to safety and security ➡️ Read the full issue now at gridphilly.com 📸 Cover photo by Jordan Teicher #philadelphia #phillynews #sustainability #sustainableliving #environmentalnews #independentjournalism
📱 Shortly before my 24th birthday, I decided to re 📱 Shortly before my 24th birthday, I decided to replace my iPhone with a flip phone. I have abstractly considered making the change on numerous occasions, tired of the Internet following me around everywhere I go, always on the verge of being mindlessly lured to it. During the short portion of my life when the Internet was stationary, I spent a lot of time sitting at the family computer. I was jealous of my older sister when she got a cellphone. I begged my parents for an iPod Touch, making do for a while with a hand-me-down Samsung that wasn’t connected to a phone number and only worked on WiFi. When I finally got a smartphone in eighth grade, I was congratulated. Yet after a decade of smartphone ownership, I’m unsatisfied. It hasn’t improved my life, it’s made it worse. How much time has been lost to a bottomless feed? How often have I gone to check the weather, but instead open Twitter, browse for ten minutes before ripping myself away and locking the screen, only to return to my physical surroundings and realize that I still don’t know the forecast? ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Gabriel Donahue #philadelphia #technology #smartphones #digitaldetox #flipphone #offline
🏞️ The Fairmount Park Conservancy, Philadelphia’s 🏞️ The Fairmount Park Conservancy, Philadelphia’s largest parks-focused nonprofit, has tread perilous ground over the past several years as it leads one of the largest open space transformations in the city’s recent history: a $250 million overhaul of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Park in South Philadelphia. The conservancy has caught flak from some community and advocacy groups that are critical of elements of the plan. As reported in Grid #187, it is just the latest chapter in a long history of controversy over public park management in Philadelphia dating back to colonial times. Despite these circumstances, Anthony Sorrentino, who became chief executive officer of the conservancy in October, is taking a decidedly optimistic — and open — approach to the job. Even before his first day, Sorrentino was waxing poetic and engaging in conversation about Philadelphia’s park system in a LinkedIn post. During an interview with Grid at the conservancy’s West Fairmount Park offices in November 2025, Sorrentino opened with an offer to “call me Tony” and said he planned to serve as a “happy warrior” for Philadelphia’s parks, boosting not only their physical quality but their profile in civic life. “The conservancy is 28, going on 29 years of age, and has been going through its own growth spurts all that time, and I think it’s matured into an organization that’s kind of ready to be more than one or two things,” Sorrentino said, noting that it has traditionally served in a fundraising capacity. “There’s a moment for greater, lower-‘a’ advocacy. That might be the next level of maturity for the organization.” ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Kyle Bagenstose 📸 Albert Yee #philadelphia #urbannature #urbanparks #phillyparks #fairmountpark #fdrpark
💍 Growing up, Maddy Hirsch wanted two things: to m 💍 Growing up, Maddy Hirsch wanted two things: to make useful things with her hands and to own her own business. Guided by those goals, she enrolled in Temple University’s entrepreneurial studies program, only to feel disillusioned with what she saw as its narrow focus on traditional and tech startups. She transferred to the Tyler School of Art & Architecture, but found it too centered on conceptual art. “I wanted to understand how my work moves through the world on a very physical level,” Hirsch says. “I like making tangible things that people can interact with every day.” Before dropping out of Tyler, she took a jewelry-making class that helped bring her path into focus. Here was a medium that blended art and craft and opened up a feasible avenue toward entrepreneurship. “Making jewelry made perfect sense to me: It’s practical, fun and pretty,” Hirsch notes. “So in 2017, I started working for a jeweler in Philly, and I’ve been doing this ever since.” After a few years working her way up — from running errands on Jewelers’ Row to setting diamonds at a hip-hop jewelry store on South Street — Hirsch opened her own brick-and-mortar shop, Tshatshke Jewelry Studio (Tshatshke is pronounced “CHOTCH-kee”) in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood. ➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com ✍️ Emily Kovach 📸 Tracie Van Auken #philadelphia #jewelrymaker #jewelryshop #phillyartist #supportlocalartists #supportlocalbusinesses
Events happening in and around Philadelphia this w Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend! ➡️ Elkins Park Library Winter Seed Sowing: Join Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership and Penn State Extension Master Gardeners to learn about the importance of native plants and how to grow them ourselves. Attendees will learn how to start seeds outside in containers, protected from wildlife, while also benefiting from the cold temperatures. When: Saturday, February 21st (11:00 AM - 12:30 PM) Where: Elkins Park Free Library 563 Church Road Elkins Park, PA 19027 ➡️ Meeting of the Griots: Join us for an unforgettable intergenerational celebration of story and local history during the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. February 2026 marks the centennial celebration’s theme: “A Century of Black History Commemorations.” Meeting of the Griots Exhibition is a free, family-friendly gathering bringing together elders, youth, artists, scholars, and community members to share stories, preserve heritage, and experience culture and connection. When: Saturday, February 21st (11:00 AM - 3:00 PM) Where: 1501 North Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19121 ➡️ Big Rocks, Big Trees: Some of the biggest Tulip trees in the Wissahickon await you on this 3.5 mile hike using a lesser traveled footpath in the Lower Wissahickon. On the way we will see other Wissahickon iconic landmarks such as Kelpius Cave and 100 Steps. When: Saturday, February 21st (9:00 AM - 11:30 AM) Where: Hermit Lane Trailhead Kiosk 2RG2+44G Philadelphia, PA 19128 #philadelphia #philly #phillysupportphilly #eventsinphilly #phillyevents #phillyevent #philadelphiaevents
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