Audience applauding after a talk at a chapter meeting

Past Events

May Chapter Meeting: From Soil to Seed

Adaptive agriculture, formerly known as Landrace, is a method of cultivating fruits and vegetables for best quality and less work. Interestingly, the seeds and the soil make all the difference.

Due to the priority of large-scale agriculture focusing on the quantity of edible plant production, the nutrient quality has suffered over the last several decades. Research has indicated that seed genetics is the most important factor in contributing to nutrient density, followed by seed variety and then soil. NSD member Cristal Punaro (certified in permaculture) presented this intriguing information at our chapter meeting in May. Read how to go about the process yourself in our June newsletter.

View more in the Members' Area

April Orchard Tour

Member Karla Patino welcomed almost 60 of us to her grove in late April – our biggest turnout yet for an orchard tour. The majority of her thousand-plus trees are sweet lime, avocado (mostly Hass, with Fuerte for pollination), and a variety of guava. In addition, anything she can eat is welcomed in her grove. Karla considers her grove to be on the eclectic side, a bit disorganized by design. You might find potatoes and pumpkins growing next to grapevines, or corn growing next to lemon trees.

Karla’s commitment to live sustainably and help create a healthy environment is evident throughout the property. Solar panels generate all the electricity needed to power her home and property, including pumping water from her 800 foot deep well. The property requires as much as 10,000 gallons of water in 24 hours, mostly provided by the well, with city water to supplement when the well can’t keep up.

There are numerous compost piles throughout the property, full of tree and plant trimmings and shredded cardboard boxes that she collects from dumpsters to keep out of the landfill. In addition to compost, she fertilizes with True Organics 10-2-8 fertilizer. Her honeybees provide pollination and honey. Many thanks to Karla for her generous sharing of knowledge, beauty and flavor!

Food Preservation Workshop

The chapter held its first (in a long while) workshop at the home of Cristal Punaro in Fallbrook. Cristal went into detail on both freezing and dehydrating, offering some great equipment recommendations as well as methods. Cristal focuses on maintaining nutritional content when preserving her food and had some great ideas about how to do this with dehydration, in particular, using a low level of heat. She offered the group samples of many of her home-dehydrated fruits and some flowers, along with a couple of fruit leathers.

Marcia Faller followed Cristal with teaching how to can using a hot water bath and pressure canner. She covered the various equipment options, and discussed the reasons for determining which method to use and why.

We had some excellent dialogue as well as a great spread of food to snack on - thanks to everyone who brought something to share.