Meg Paska with the Hayseed’s store mascot, Carrot. All photographs by Valery Rizzo/Nona Brooklyn. It’s a dreamy combination of hipster clichés: an urban farming-themed pop-up store made of salvaged materials. In Brooklyn. Maybe that’s why, when Hayseed’s Big City Farm Supply opened at the beginning of April, founder Meg Paska thought, “we’re going to get mocked.” But mockery did not ensue; instead, an enthusiastic community response showed that Paska was on to something with this small, seasonal shop catering to the needs of people growing food and raising animals in the city. Paska, who blogs about her own backyard garden, chicken coop, and beehive at Brooklyn Homesteader, started Hayseed’s with the folks who run Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farm in Queens. The store will be ... Continue reading →
In many parts of the country, we're entering the heart of the growing season, a time when you're most likely to find a farmer's market teeming with delicious local food. But did you ever wonder how your state ranks in terms of the local food movement? Strolling of the Heifers, an organization dedicated to supporting and preserving sustainable, local agriculture, just released its 2012 Locavore Index, a ranking system based on government statistics and other local food and farm data. To come up with the ranking system, the organization looked at data from the United Sates Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Census, and other government data that compared the number of community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs and farmer's markets to a state's population. They used ... Continue reading →
Infertility is a common problem in the United States. In fact, one in 10 women of childbearing age have trouble getting pregnant. Many of these women turn to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, considered the most effective assisted reproductive technology available. Now, a new study suggests that the common canned food chemical BPA, or bisphenol A, could lower a woman's chance of getting—and staying—pregnant while on IVF treatment. BPA, a potent hormone-disrupting chemical with a long rap sheet of health problems, is already one of the suspected environmental causes of infertility. But this latest study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, specifically looked at women undergoing IVF treatment. "This study is small, examining only 137 women and 180 IVF attempts, so we can't make ... Continue reading →
