Ever since we started living in a place were every square inch is growing something useful (to people and other creatures), our eyes are opened to the possibility of transforming lawns and other unused green space to grow food. Why water a lawn full of grass when you could water ...

Bryant Terry, co-author of the book GRUB: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, and Jason Harvey, founder of Oakland Food Connection, teamed up recently to have a totally organic soul food brunch. Hanging out with food justice foodies as of late, we’ve been hearing a similar idea ...

Welcome to the first video installment of our new “Dinner And A…” series. In this episode, we get a visit from Ryanne Hodson of RyanIsHungry, Jay Dedman of Momentshowing, and Eddie Codel of Geek Entertainment TV.

As this was our first attempt at capturing a dinner event in ...

Neelam Sharma is the Programs Director for CSU, Community Services Unlimited, an organization empowering South Central Los Angeles residents to eat and grow healthy food. The “Food Not Lawns” attitude towards neighborhoods, I must admit, is infectious. After hanging out with urban and suburban farmers in the last year, ...

We first met the Community Services Unlimited folks at the Just Us For Food Justice Bioneers day. They told us we should come check out their work in community gardening in South Central LA. How could we not? These folks are on the front lines of urban ...

As you might remember, we made a new worm bin after our original bin failed. This new one is doing great! The drainage holes in the bottom have helped keep it moist but not too wet, the shallow shape allows the worms to get to everything faster and ...

In this podcast, we hear from Verizon Business customer, Jack Chen, Chief Information Officer for the Office of the Provost for Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. Mr. Chen discusses how collaboration is at the heart of the university and how the university leverages technology to foster ...

This is a real treat. Stanford University’s Ian Hsu setup a tour for a fairly large group of photographers. We met Patience Young, who gave us a tour of the Rodin Statue Garden, Bernard Barryte who told us a story about the Burghers of Calais, and Gabe Hoffman and the ...

On this Episode Lo-Fi Saint Louis gets green with a visit to the Earthways Festival. The Earthways Festival is a showcase of green technology and practice held once a year at the Earthways Center in St. Louis. The Earthways Center was etablished by the Missouri Botanical Garden to promote ...

GRuB is an Olympia, Washington based organization created to connect youth with where their food comes from. GRuB runs a small farm and a local garden bed project to get folks growing food in their own backyards.

A Word of Warning: This is a graphic video. If you do not eat meat and think killing animals to do so is bad, you should not watch this video.

We live at The San Mateo Eco-Village, where we know our neighbors, garden together and learn how to live more ...

The Green City Gallery is an eco-demonstration site/art gallery/community meeting and event space in downtown Berkeley, Calif. A collaboration between Bay Localize, an Oakland-based non-profit focused on post petroleum community empowerment, and Dig Cooperative, an eco-design crew helping to re-invent urban environments to be more sustainable. The ...

Great Tomato Caper Update:

Oh man. All I wanted was to make home-grown, organic, sun-dried tomatoes…. I just didn’t know what I was in for. This tomato caper business is making us all a little crazy here at Freshtopia HQ. Growing your own tomatoes simply isn’t for the faint of heart. ...

We spent the weekend at the Get Tough or Die Farm (a.k.a. Tanja’s mother’s house). When neighborhood cats and children aren’t disappearing in the “Tomato Triangle,” they’re dodging the assault of the trained attack rabbits, and let’s not even mention the sunflowers. It was a most relaxing weekend, filled with ...

Believe us when we say that no chickens were hurt in the making of this episode. Our friends Raven, Baxter and Adesina have made the leap from avid backyard gardeners, to avid backyard chicken enthusiasts! Though their motivation for getting into the chicken-caper was pretty solidly egg-based, the love ...

Entertaining this spring? Afternoon garden party perhaps? Today, Tanja puts together a light, refreshing cocktail that is sure to soothe both body and mind; Virgin Ginger Mojitos. They’re quick and easy to make, and contain a host of compounds that will do your body good. Make a pitcher the next ...

At Sapphire 2007, Coté and Thomas Otter talk about gardening developer communities, pulling customer feedback into the community, getting more use from internal blogs and wikis, how Cluetrain thought applies to developing software, and making content creation easy for developers.

Welcome to our second installment of the Great Tomato Caper. This summer-long series will follow the saga of Tanja’s vision for the perfect, home-grown, heirloom variety, home-made, sun-dried tomatoes. In this episode, we’ll take a look at how our seven tomato starts are progressing, talk a bit about natural pest ...

BOT house, the morning after…

Barb, Oscar and Tanja are tired after a big weekend of partying. All the dip has been eaten, but there’s still flax crackers and nice raw veggies left! What’s a fresh chef to do? Make more of the most popular dip, of course! Even though she’s ...

We’ve had bees on the brain! Freshtopia.net dove into the sad tale of Colony Collapse Disorder, or “CCD,” and its grim implications, to emerge on the other side with some words of wisdom on how to show our busy little sisters some love, and a sweet recipe to cheer us ...

Despite dire warnings that they may be disappearing, bees just seem like they’re everywhere lately, from the news to our neighbor’s chimney. Freshtopia went on a field trip to learn more about the secret lives of these busy little critters.

Peter Sinton of the San Francisco Beekeepers’ Association was kind enough ...

Tired of chasing the Good Humor truck? Gotta get that ice cream monkey off your back? Here’s an ice cream with all the things we love: creaminess, beautiful flavors, and sweet surrender, without the things that don’t necessarily love us back, like dairy and white sugar!

We’re going green in a fresh way this episode! Tanja has a longstanding obsession with sun-dried heirloom tomatoes, and she’s finally taking action! Barb Finnin, Freshtopia.net’s resident Master Composter and garden guru shows us how to plant tomatoes, and dishes the dirt on soil health. Welcome to the first installment ...

A former Ford Motor Co. engineer has created a small engine fuel-injection system that he claims increases fuel efficiency, reduces emissions and improves overall engine performance. 27-year-old Kyle Schwultz quit his job at Ford to start up his company, Electrojet. His product was on display at the Cleantech Venture ...