How do you be green when traveling with kids?

We recently took a short family trip to San Diego, and we were wondering what are ways we could be more eco-friendly when traveling?

Check out a cross-post on greenpropaganda for what we did in San Diego and our thoughts on eco-friendly travel for lodging, transportation, food, activities and stuff.

Do you have any suggestions?

Growing a Revolution

Metro Silicon Valley recently had a cover story that featured several of our favorite local urban farming projects including Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale, Veggielution in East San Jose and Happy Quail Farms in East Palo Alto.

Check out the article here.

Pumpkin Patch at Webb Ranch

On Sunday, we went to the pumpkin patch at Webb Ranch in Menlo Park and had a ton of fun. So many pumpkins of all different colors and sizes!

It was great because Webb Ranch not only has a pumpkin patch before Halloween, but also sells fresh, local produce from its own farm (family owned and operated since 1922) and from nearby farms like Swank Farms in Hollister and others.

Check out some of the pics that we took!

Perfect Sunday

Moments from a really nice Sunday...

• The whole family sitting at the dining table, laughing, talking and enjoying a family breakfast at home: hash browns, bacon and home-made blueberry pancakes
• Kaiya at the farmer's market having a great time munching on locally grown raspberries, watching a local musician strum his guitar, and getting excited as the Caltrain rolls by
• Kaiya smiling really wide while walking Cooper in our courtyard
• Cooking a nice 3-mushroom soup with the Giants game on in the background while Kaiya naps

Recycled Board Books!

One of our favorite books is In The Garden, made by innovativeKids. They have a whole set of really cute board books made out of 98% recycled materials with nature and eco-friendly themes like gardens, trees, and baby animals.

It's neat to see pictures of how different veggies grow - on trees, vines, bushes or underground. Especially since we can read about pulling carrots out of the ground and picking peas/beans off the vine, and then go to our community garden to do it for real!

Friends In Our Garden

One of the best things about our community garden plot is being able to take our friends to visit. We can show them what we have growing in the garden (right now: corn, peppers, carrots, snap peas, butternut squash, beets, fennel, leeks, and raspberries), and our friends can see how all these veggies grow.

Our friend Fiona recently came to our garden to pick some peppers.

U-Pick Tomatoes at Full Circle Farm on Sun 9/20!

[Original post]

Join us for some fun picking tomatoes at Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale! Just found out about this from the Full Circle Farm newsletter - it's so fresh that it's not even on the Full Circle Farm website yet.

If you have not been to or have not heard of Full Circle Farm, it is a really neat non-profit working farm on under-utilized land at a middle school in suburban Sunnyvale. It's a really creative re-use of land where the farm provides fresh organic produce to local schools, neat educational opportunities for children, and a great source of very local veggies to folks in the South Bay.

Here's the info from the Full Circle Farm newsletter:

We will host a mixed-heirloom tomato picking event during our farm stand hours Sunday, September 20th. Fresh and ripe from the vine, we have Romas, Brandywines, and more. We're open between 11:00 and 3:00 for this unique, hands-on experience in our crop rows!

Free admission; hand-picked heirlooms will go for $1.75 per pound. We encourage everyone to bring bags from home. Tomatoes are available first come, first serve. Don't fret! This will not be a one time event, check back frequently for more You-Pick announcements.

Full Circle Farm is located at:
1055 Dunford Way
Sunnyvale, CA 94087

[Update]

Tomato u-pick photos

When I Go To Stanfurd...

... I want to take this class! Food and Politics

Making and then eating good food? Talking Michael Pollan and about where food comes from? Maybe if they had classes like this when Dad went to Berkeley, he would have actually gone to class.

So Many Things To Do!

I don't know if Mom and Dad will be able to take me to any of these, but Dad found these 3 fun food events in the next few weeks:

1. Sat, 9/26: Tomato U-pick at Mariquita Farm in Hollister. Dad is excited that organic tomatoes are only $0.50 lb. I'm excited that I can pick tomatoes right off the vine like at Grandpa's garden. http://www.mariquita.com/events/tomupick09.html
2. Sun, 10/4: Full Moon Potluck at Hidden Villa in Los Altos. Dad thinks I'll like the music from the acapella group from Stanfurd. I'd just like to feed the chickens and pet the sheep like I did last time at Hidden Villa. http://hiddenvilla.org/calendar9.php
3. Sat, 10/17: Gardening with Your Children class at Common Ground Organic in Palo Alto. Dad is not sure I'll be able to sit through the class. But it would be fun to see more gardens. http://gardenchildren.eventbrite.com/

Tea Time

I love playing with this really cool tea set that Mom bought me - made out of recycled milk jugs! They're pretty with nice colors, very sturdy, and best of all, very eco-friendly.

Green Toys makes this tea set, and much more! (I'm hoping that I get the recycling truck soon!) Here's their website if you want to check out their other toys: http://greentoys.com/tea.html