Guest Blogger Eve Sibley's Slow Food Nation Report

Remember Eve Sibley? Well, she just returned to her treehouse from a visit to Slow Food Nation '08 and graciously volunteered to guest blog about both her trip:

A couple of weeks ago I left my backwoods, South Carolina Low Country lifestyle to meet a friend in San Francisco. There, I promoted the web site I've been working on, WorldFoodGarden.Org, at the Slow Food Nation event, which was promoted online as a "collaborative gathering to unite the growing sustainable food movement and introduce thousands of people to food that is good, clean and fair."

Several food and garden-related celebrities were in attendance at the conference. I mustered up the nerve to give Vandana Shiva , world-renowned seed activist, a card advertising my site. I also stood in line to meet a long-time hero of my dad, sister, and I, Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma. Alice Waters-- famed restaurateur and garden activist who started The Edible Schoolyard that promotes growing gardens in schools--was walking through the lobby one day and I was completely elated when she foresaw possible collaboration between her school gardens and the map of small food gardens on my site. Imagine classroom gardens worldwide locating each other on one garden map and building curriculums based around climates, culture and gardening!

Besides the food celebrities in attendance, the crowd at Slow Food Nation was packed with very cool farmers, gardeners, and slow food vendors (with long slow lines- you get what you ask for!). They had a really cool compost worm bin display set up, and the friendly compost guy gave me a bag of his "black gold" to add to my neglected Victory Garden.

My friend I also attended an outside event, led by Brooke Budner, who manages Victory Gardens 2008+ and with whom I'd been in touch with beforehand when I was promoting the Bring Back the Victory Garden Petition. We got a tour of her personal Victory Garden and ended up in a small meeting room full of young progressive farmers and farming activists who run sites like Good Farm Movement and Eat Well Guide. This was a real treat and felt like one of those moviesque flash-backs to the small staging locations of great historical movements when small groups of individuals get together over one cause and end up changing the world. 

Tomorrow: Eve fills us in on her World Food Garden project...

Photo Credit: Eve Sibley's photograph of Brooke Budner's San Francisco Victory Garden.