safe haven for tiny formats

[Jay DeFehr]

Very nice, Eddy. Many years ago I became interested in hydroponics, and decided to give it a go, in a very low-fi way. I filled a 5 gallon bucket with rocks and gravel from my driveway, a nice mix from fist-sized down to pea-sized, and started a single tomato plant with some home-brew nutrient solution. had a leaky spigot outside my kitchen window, and placed the pail beneath it, so the media had a more or less constant supply of water -- just enough to keep the stones moist. To my great surprise, the little tomato plant took off! I stung a line to the peak of my roof and down to the pail, and pruned the tomato to a single vine. Every few days, another cluster of perfect, vine-ripened tomatoes was ready to eat, until at the end of the growing season, the vine had reached the peak of my roof, 25' above the pail. I grew tomatoes every year after that-- more varieties than I can list here -- and I've not been able to buy them without holding my nose until I moved to Seattle. We are very lucky to have numerous local organic growers to choose from, year-round. The pink styrofoam tomatoes sold in most grocery stores are an abomination, and bear only a superficial resemblance to the real thing.

[eddy pula]

Jay have you ever read a Day in the Life Of Ivan something russian by Solzhenezin (horrible russian memory) its terrifying to think that similar things are going on in the orange state... They don't need fences when they have 20 miles of swamp surrounding their farms, just like there was no escaping Siberia, except in a coffin. How can we let this happen in the 21st century, in America in every supermarket in the country....... Well what did Woody Guthrie do? Make a big stink wrote amazing songs and joined every union and paid his dues! I don't want to glorify myself, I just try and do a little bit of free promotion for the farmers who are doing the right thing, some of them even have huge contracts $100k with whole foods, the long term goal is to shame walmart and target into investing in it, cause they have the greatest distribution on earth, or so the old farmers tell me.

[mdm]

You are a wuss. Take your Texas Leica to the swamps.

[Ari]

Jay have you ever read a Day in the Life Of Ivan something russian by Solzhenezin (horrible russian memory) its terrifying to think that similar things are going on in the orange state... They don't need fences when they have 20 miles of swamp surrounding their farms, just like there was no escaping Siberia, except in a coffin. How can we let this happen in the 21st century, in America in every supermarket in the country....... Well what did Woody Guthrie do? Make a big stink wrote amazing songs and joined every union and paid his dues! I don't want to glorify myself, I just try and do a little bit of free promotion for the farmers who are doing the right thing, some of them even have huge contracts $100k with whole foods, the long term goal is to shame walmart and target into investing in it, cause they have the greatest distribution on earth, or so the old farmers tell me.

Eddy, you're thinking of The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, about the forced labour camps; the other book is The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Tolstoy, and very different in subject matter.
Both are very much worth reading.

[Jay DeFehr]

Eddy,

I think social activism via photography is an honorable tradition, and I commend you for your efforts on behalf of the exploited laborers in Florida. How about a book?

Ari,

I haven't read either book, but I'm sure they're both very interesting. I love Russian literature.

[eddy pula]

hate to disagree, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day...van_Denisovich
We had an amazing russian literature teacher at MassArt, was an illustrator and made amazing limited edition illustrated versions of Gogol and stuff. Its kind of the animal farm version of Gulag Archipeligo, a fictionlized account of one composite political prisoner

[eddy pula]

also Jay, I wish I was that hard core, I've just been working on a documentary (I take stills, my budy does video) about local farms, from 3 dudes and a tractor all the way up to big new england regional farms, the Connecticut river valley (where I was born and raised and have returned, Amherst Mass) is full of intellectuals (5 colleges and all) and great fertile land (we still grow the finest cigar wrapping tobbacco leaves!) so its full of alternative food supply people, and some of these people live right next door, you drive past them all the time, instead of focusing on the negative parts of the status quo we are trying to broadcast how easy and fun being a conscious consumer can be, families love going to the farms and picking their own stuff, or even just trading recipes or taking cooking classes on the farms. Plus aggie chicks are hawt dude!

[eddy pula]

Also the simplest reason is, they have the worst pictures on their websites and I need more commercial portraiture in my portfolio if I want to be a sell out and move out of my parents house! check out the tumblr I made to try and get the pictures out to the farmers, they are good people but a little slow in the way of internet picture distribution http://pvfsp.tumblr.com/ I'm gonna put a bunch of the new stuff up tonight so check it and spread the word

[eddy pula]

We've been going to like 4-5 farms a day, the filmmaker Jeremiah Burbank is the brains he keeps track of where the heck we go, I'm the eyes and voice that gets all the young girls and old grumpy men to talk to us! Check out his vimeo page, mostly videos of me right now (too many editing projects for that kid, he's backed up like 3 months deep, he really needs an assistant) https://vimeo.com/user6277012

[Michael Cienfuegos]

Very nice, Eddy. Many years ago I became interested in hydroponics, and decided to give it a go, in a very low-fi way. I filled a 5 gallon bucket with rocks and gravel from my driveway, a nice mix from fist-sized down to pea-sized, and started a single tomato plant with some home-brew nutrient solution. had a leaky spigot outside my kitchen window, and placed the pail beneath it, so the media had a more or less constant supply of water -- just enough to keep the stones moist. To my great surprise, the little tomato plant took off! I stung a line to the peak of my roof and down to the pail, and pruned the tomato to a single vine. Every few days, another cluster of perfect, vine-ripened tomatoes was ready to eat, until at the end of the growing season, the vine had reached the peak of my roof, 25' above the pail. I grew tomatoes every year after that-- more varieties than I can list here -- and I've not been able to buy them without holding my nose until I moved to Seattle. We are very lucky to have numerous local organic growers to choose from, year-round. The pink styrofoam tomatoes sold in most grocery stores are an abomination, and bear only a superficial resemblance to the real thing.

Pink styrofoam? That's a new one for me. I always looked at them as kind of a red mealy thing. I managed to grow some wonderful tomatoes last summer, they were wonderful, my GF and I ate tomatoes until they finally died out. I have some started again, but they aren't near ready yet. That's what I get for procrastinating.