Look first at this all Organic local grown meal we prepared, yea baby!!!! We had fresh fish caught by our friend we cleaned and baked. Organic steamed green beans, Organic Avocado, Organic Garden Squash steamed, Organic salad with our compost grown sunflower greens, and Organic sweet potato. It was so ono!!!!
Next some great news, in our testimonies to the County of Maui Council on the budget for fiscal 09,10 we requested and received unanimous support for a separate line item in funding from the county.
It still needs to pass through two readings under a full council yet we are hopeful they will continue to support what they all agreed to.
What this means is that Maui Aloha Aina Association will no longer be under the farm bureau in getting our funding from the county. Also the county is going to be funding us to hold an agricultural summit to development an ecological whole system approach in the formation of an action plan for our islands food security and sustainability.
What is heartening for us is the county seeing the value of what we are doing and how we need as an island to be moving in a direction that will truly sustain our physical and environmental well being. Were also in the process of building our next "Body and Soil" conference slated for the middle of January 2010. Stay tuned for more details on this tradition of a very provocative event for Maui.
Sharing some very sad news we put out in a newsletter in January was the passing of Charles "Chuck" Walters founder of ACRES USA and an icon of eco-agriculture.
When we last posted our blog it was after the ACRES Conference where we last saw and spent time with Chuck. We feel so very fortunate to have had a personal friendship with this humble yet highly educated man who stood up and spoke up for the small family farm and all of our small diverse farms that make up the back bone of our eco-logical agricultural scene.
His humor and wit along with his pointed "view from the country" will truly will be missed.
Thankfully and selflessly he left behind a legacy of holding space for eco agricultural leaders in Kinsey, Brunetti, Zimmer, Shaffer, Salatin, Anderson the list goes on and on to continue to blaze the educational trail he began back when he founded ACRES USA in the early seventies. While his son Fred who has been running the operations of the publication and conferences continues with the standards and values set by Chuck.
Into a future that will serve as a beacon guiding us all into an eco logical relationship with the natural world in our agricultural evolution of practice.
Our Ma'a board, Vincent Mina, Jim Hall, and Irene Plunkett with Ann Walters, Chucks wife and matriarch of the publication and conferences.
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