Vote on Brines Farm video

I submitted a video to the Convenient Truths: a green video contest. The contest called for inspiring, pragmatic, and compelling entries that address solutions to reducing one's personal carbon emissions. I think my video in conjunction with the how-to resources I've been upgrading on my website about growing ones own food is a pretty darn good entry. The way this contest works is during the first phase you dear reader can participate. The public can rate all of the entries. Your vote counts! Videos are rated 1-5 with 5 being the highest rating!




I must confess, I had delusions of grandeur that I was going to make this technically glamorous video. In the end I had to piece together this 2 minute or less video from about 20 minutes of footage I took one snowy day at the hoophouse. It was difficult to tell the full story in 2 minutes or less with the footage I had time to obtain, even with a little non-linear editing. The full story being that if you can harvest your own food year-round (or have a local farmer that can for you) using nothing but a healthy compost soil and the sun, you can significantly decrease your carbon footprint. And it's not just because the food isn't being transported from far distances from California, Mexico, and beyond. If you consider an operation like mine or someone's backyard or balcony garden, there is very little if any fossil fuels used in the planting, growing, and harvesting of the food. The food I harvest is transported about 12 miles. Since I pretty much always harvest less than 24 hours prior to selling everything at the farmers market, energy used in storage of the food before a customer buys it is basically eliminated (especially from Fall to Spring when essentially no refrigeration is ever needed). Customers at the farmers market - who by the way tend to be people who consolidate auto trips or walk or bike to market (one regular customer jogs to market) - will use energy storing and preparing their food but this is often similar to that if they buy at a supermarket. This is why the best thing is actually harvesting from your own backyard/balcony/rooftop and preparing immediately and why my video points to my website for resources to do something at a smaller scale for your own year-round food. Anyway, this question of reducing one's footprint when considering food, the idea of creating win-win sustainable agriculture techniques that result in better, fresher, more healthier food on a smaller footprint, was a huge component of my motivation for Brines Farm. So I simply had to submit something to this contest. I guess with additional filming days and a lot more "takes" I could have talked faster and cleaner and said everything I just typed in 2 minutes or less... but I'll have to do that at a future date (perahps there's a budding videographer out there who wants to help with that). Anyway, this video is what I could put together but I feel pretty good about it. By the way, it's a little confusing but in the beginning of the video I reference some research done at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources & Environment (where I work), particularly I'm thinking of this life cycle analysis (LCA) of the US food system which was pivotal as I thought of parts of the food system where I could have larger impact at reducing the footprint.

Go watch my video and the others and rate them!