FRESH: Get On The Good Foot!

FRESH is more than a movie, it’s a gateway to action. Our aim is to help grow FRESH food, ideas, and become active participants in an exciting, vibrant, and fast-growing movement.

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.

» FRESH the movie

FRESH Details
Total running time: 72 minutes
Production Year: 2009

Produced and Directed by: ana Sofia joanes

View A Trailer...

Will Allen, 6ft 7" former professional basketball player, is now one of the most influential leaders of the food security & urban farming movement. His farm and not-for-profit, Growing Power, have trained and inspired people in every corner of the US to start growing food sustainably.

This man and his organization go beyond growing food. They provide a platform for people to share knowledge and form relationships in order to develop alternatives to the industrial food system.

» Growing Power

Cool Site: FreeRice.com

If you have a few minutes, point your browser to FreeRice.com but you'd better bring your brain! I just spent just a few minutes and helped them donate over 1000 grains -- and you can too, just give it a try.

You are given a vocabulary word, and all you need to do is, "click on the answer that best defines the word." For each word you get right, they will donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

This is really innovative and a brilliant idea: create a vocabulary game to help folks learn English vocabulary (and test their wits), and donate all the advertising proceeds to a worthy cause. Simple, huh? The site launched in October, 2007 and they have already donated more than 12,369,264,510 grains of rice. That seems like a lot of rice!

It's easy to play and it feels good to do something good for someone... Why not give it a try?

DIY: Instructables Makes "Making It" Fun!

I'm finally getting around to blogging the instructables web site even though I've been visiting the site for some time now. It's an amazing resource of fun, interesting and resourceful projects you can do at home with your family. The DIY trend (Do It Yourself) is only going to become more popular as product prices and the overall cost of living continues to rise... Even the evening news has started to mention "inflation", so it's either on it's way for sure or it's already here.

At instructables you can delve into projects like making your own top-down blinds, or if you're courageous enough, you can even build a Mongolian Yurt! Categories include: Art, Craft, Food, Games, Home, Life, Ride, Offbeat, and Tech. They also have slideshows, videos, forums and groups so you can meet other "makers" as well. If you are looking to solve a problem or make something on the cheap -- or, if you need to find something productive to do on a rainy day, then this is the place to go!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that they have a robot on staff...

"I am the Instructables Robot. My job is to alert you whenever someone leaves you a comment or sends you a private message. I spend most of my day sending email. I like sending email."

The instructables web site is community driven and it's completely free, so if you're into making stuff why not join up? I did! The site is one of the many successful projects by the fine folks at Fluffco.