“We are doing this to change the world.” (Katherine Lavine, Holy Cow Café)
With Katherine Lavine, Co-owner of Holy Cow Café
Lorin Anderberg: What steps do you take as a business to be sustainable?
K: We are actually supporting the community in our area by working with a series of small businesses in town that are all ethically based and we all become this eco system that has gotten bigger and bigger. That’s the number one this is to support your local community, and also sustainability.
L: What message do you want your business to send?
K: That every time you spend money on food you’re voting for your future. So if you would like to have a future where the fields are dead, the water is polluted and the air is full of smoke, then you can buy the cheapest food that’s trucked in from China that may or may not be food. I think that if you choose McDonald’s with its dollar hamburger you’re going to get a world that has deforestation. I think that honestly, people have much more power than they understand and If they thought that every time they spend a dollar that they are voting then they might behave differently.
Jen Stein, Recycle and Sustainability Chair for Alpha Chi Omega Sorority
Lorin Anderberg: What does living a sustainable life style mean to you?
J: To me, living sustainably means that you leave every place you go cleaner than it was before you arrived and that you as an individual are having as small of a negative impact on the environment as you can. It means buying reusable things, eating organic and locally grown food, and eliminating useless pollution and damage to our environment.
L: What do you think about local produce and individuals growing their own crops? (community gardens, etc.)
J: I think that local produce is incredible and tastes so much better than store bought food, I don’t know why people prefer stores like Safeway. I know they can be a bit more expensive but it is so worth it in the end to buy locally. I personally have my own garden at home that my parents and I started, we have lettuce, tomatoes, fruit, spinach, carrots and more. I plan on always buying locally if not picking from my own garden wherever I live.
Martha Ray, Eugene Native & The Eugene Backyard Farmer Regular Customer
Olivia Gonzalez: That’s great that you have such good relations with your chickens! I’m sure they make you very happy. Do you do any other type of backyard farming? Like gardening? Where do you go for all of your urban farming needs?
M: Yes I do. I have always enjoyed gardening and I have done it for many years now. Nowadays, I actually get all of my gardening and chicken supplies at The Eugene Backyard Farmer. The owner of that place has helped me out so much. Bill is so knowledgeable and I truly believe that he wants to spread the word about backyard farming to the entire Eugene community! The gratification of being to produce your own food on your own land is a wonderful feeling because it is in its purest form. And I love knowing that I grew something for myself. And having fresh eggs is a nice perk too.
Tyler Eagson, Student & President of Urban Farming Club at Local Community College
O: Why do you think college students haven’t fully embraced backyard farming? And what are you currently doing to educate your peers about it?
T: You know that’s a really good question. (Laughs, pauses for some time) I don’t really know to be honest with you. I don’t really get why people my age don’t want to do it. But I don’t know, now that you have me thinking about it, I’m sure it’s a really foreign concept for them and they’re probably scared about trying something like this. Yeah starting up is a little bit of hard work, but now since I’ve been doing it for so long, I feel like it’s second nature. I find it fun actually. I wish more people my age could see that too. So I’m always putting out informational flyers around my school, I’m putting together a club to get more people involved and I’m always trying to recruit more people interested in this sort of thing.
O: Is backyard farming something that you’re passionate about and are thinking about pursuing later on in life?
T: Like a career in backyard farming? You know I haven’t really thought about it that much. I’m sure if I’m still all about it when it comes to that point in my life, than yeah, I would like to do something with it. And yeah, overall I am very passionate about it. I would love to see more people my age get involved with it and hopefully through my club, I can make that happen. So yeah, my own personal backyard garden and chickens are really important to me. At first, my mom wasn’t too excited about me bringing home chickens but now my whole family enjoys what I do. At first it was just a personal hobby for me but now it’s something that is actually really important in my life and takes up a good chunk of my time.
Tatiana Perczek, Owner and Manager of Tell Tale Farm
Ashley Carter: Why do you think that farming is important?
T: Well, it’s where our food comes from. If there weren’t farmers like me, or if there were no farmers at all, we would just be foraging for food in the wild, pretty much. Or eating meat. I think farming of the type that I do is especially important because so many varieties, specialized varieties of vegetables, are being lost because most of the food people do buy comes from a huge market and before that it comes from huge farms where they grow varieties that are bred to ship well and to look perfect in the store but not really to taste that well. So many hundreds of varieties of tomatoes, apples, really anything you can think of has been lost already so it’s important that people like me are doing work to keep these varieties alive or else all the vegetables will start looking like plastic and tasting like plastic too.
Paul Guernsey, third year graduate student in the Environmental Studies and Policy Program with a concentration in Philosophy
A: How much of your diet comes from the farm?
P: It depends. During the summer, definitely more. I do not buy produce, ever. Except for rarely when I need some special thing. I try to make it so that I don’t have to pay for fresh produce because typically when you are paying for fresh produce in a grocery store even in a natural store, a lot of the time it’s pretty much crap. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on something that’s crappy. And I don’t have a lot of money to spend so I try to eat what I have. If I don’t have that much fresh stuff, then I use preserved stuff like tomato sauce or dried tomatoes or dried or canned fruit. In terms of poundage it could be up to half, on average. Sometimes definitely more. All I buy are very basic things like grains and beans. I have chickens so I don’t need to buy eggs and those are expensive. So eggs are my main source of protein. I don’t have to buy seeds and stuff.