The Local Food Hub has teamed up with the Nelson County Food Pantry to provide locally grown produce for folks in need. The Pantry provides food for more that 240 households every month in Nelson County, and thanks to a recent donation of more than 400 pounds of sweet potatoes and red potatoes from Critzer Family Farms, as well as a walk-in fridge and freezer, the non-profit is now working with the Food Hub to receive and distribute local produce, much of it grown in Nelson County.

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FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Are Monticello guides snorting up lines in the fancy bathrooms of the new Visitor Center? Are the horiculturists secretly growing cannabis in Mr. Jefferson’s gardens? In short, has a major drug problem erupted at the internationally famous UNESCO World Heritage Site?

In a word, no, at least not as far as the Hook could discover, and a guffaw is the typical response when such questions are posed to current and past employees. Yet, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, has begun implementing a “drug-free workplace policy” that randomly drug tests all (more)

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It may be getting chilly, but don’t forget the Charlottesville City Market is still open. In fact, while the Market typically runs from April through October, this year the season has been extended to November 21. Also, the Charlottesville Holiday Market, which begins November 28, has been moved to the Market location in the Water Street parking lot. While current hours are every Saturday from 8am to Noon, November hours will be 8am to 2pm. So get on down there for fresh produce, crafts, herbs, meats, and baked goods before the season ends!

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The Local Food Hub, a new distributor of locally produced foods, is hosting its first open house today from 4pm to 7pm at their Ivy warehouse. Their expecting about 100 people to show up, and there’ll be live music, good local food to sample, and activities for children. You’ll also have a chance to meet local farmers and others interested in the local food movement.

Directions: (more)

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Eugene Williams has been fighting for civil rights for over 50 years, and even when City Council apologizes for past wrongs, he reminds them that the battle isn’t over.
PHOTO BY WILL WALKER

A public apology for the racial discrimination that closed public schools doesn’t go far enough, according to one man whose family was on the front lines of the struggle.

Charlottesville City Council approved a resolution October 5 that apologizes for its predecessors’ role in thwarting integration in the 1950s.

Civil rights activist Eugene Williams says the apology to the 12 African-American students who were denied admission to Venable Elementary and Lane High School in 1958 should include their parents and the parents of the more than 1,400 white students whose educations were interrupted by segregation as well.

“It affected the parents of 1,415 students,” says Williams, citing the number of white students displaced, (more)

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Haunted singer-songwriter Elvis Perkins‘ father died of AIDS after portraying serial killer Norman Bates in Psycho, and his mother was on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11th. It’s no wonder, then, that his folk-rock tunes sometimes dip into dark and reflective Leonard Cohen territory — his new release is The Doomsday EP, based around two versions of the track which originally appeared on the self-titled album he released this past spring.

Elvis Perkins In Dearland - Slow Doomsday
Elvis Perkins In Dearland - Shampoo

90’s-rocker-gone-acoustic A.A. Bondy opens.

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RSWA lawyer Kurt Krueger defined “flow-control” for Board members at their September 22 meeting.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Rivanna Solid Waste Authority director Tom Frederick has long contended that the Authority’s now $20 million RICO lawsuit against Peter Van der Linde has nothing to do with the competing trash facility the private businessperson opened last December, an $11 million Materials Recovery Facility that quickly captured the local market for construction debris and commingled recyclables. But on the eve of Van der Linde’s opening of an expansion that would also take household trash for recycling— a move that could potentially siphon off the Authority’s remaining revenue stream— the Authority is now discussing an option that could put the recycling entrepreneur out of business.

“If they hand over Ivy to Waste Management, Allied, or some other big company with a flow-control guarantee,” says Van der Linde, “I’m doomed.”

Unaware of flow-control? Don’t worry, several Board members, including (more)

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Crews were busy this morning laying the foundation for Forest Hills Park’s new “sprayground.”
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

After years of discussions and planning, major improvements to Forest Hills Park, located off Cherry Avenue, are finally becoming a reality. The $1.2 million project was put on hold by City Council last fall, due to budget concerns, but according to Parks & Rec director Brian Daly they were able to piece together funding earlier this year to update the 7.35-acre neighborhood park, the first such improvements in over half a century.

Indeed, Daly says the park’s existing wading pool, which will be replaced with a fancy new “sprayground,” is over 50 years old. The last major renovation of a city park was McGuffey Park, the little 1.1-acre park and playground next door to the McGuffey Art Center on Second Street NW. That park improvement cost the city $400,000 (the total cost of the project, thanks to $300,000 in private donations, was (more)

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Brett Wilson is sullying local produce to the hungry.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Who says the local food movement is only for the privileged? Thanks to Horse & Buggy Produce, a local foods cooperative, and Downtown’s Holy Comforter Catholic Church, some locally grown food is finding its way into the mouths of the hungry.

For years now, Holy Comforter has operated a food pantry every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday; and the Jefferson Street institution operated a soup kitchen on Thursday, serving 800 people a month. About a month ago, Laura Knox, a Eucharistic Minister there, asked Horse & Buggy owner Brett Wilson what he did with all his unsold food.

H&B has been a distributor of locally produced foods since 2006, and today has over 800 subscribers, who pick up meat, veggies, dairy, fish, and baked goods at various drop spots around town.

Wilson told her that most of the unsold food is (more)

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Maya chef Christian Kelly champions locally grown food and spirits.
FILE PHOTO BY LINDSEY BARNES

In a effort to educate local folks about sustainable agriculture and local foods, and to serve up a tasty meal, Maya on West Main is hosting a special Local Food & Spirits Night on Monday, October 5 at 6pm. The event will feature special guest speakers and food and wine from Polyface Farms, Barboursville Vineyards, and The Food Hub. According to Maya’s owners and chef, this could be a regular monthly event.

“Although we have always supported local farms and use local foods on our menu, we’ve been inspired recently by the books of Michael Pollan and the movies Fresh and Food Inc.,” says owner Peter Castiglione. “Our goal is to bring local farmers, growers, and spirit producers together once a month to share their knowledge, ideas, and produce with the community.”

Contact Maya to make your reservations.

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On Saturday, September 26 there’s a fun and food filled event happening at Green Acres Lake in Stanardsville, the Green Acres Lake Festival.

According to organizers, the event will feature live music all day with Ice House Road, Country Poor Bluegrass, and Burntmill Band, with a “little local hootenanny in between.” There’ll be kayaks and canoes (courtesy of Blue Ridge Mountain Sports) to take out on the lake, games on the beach for all ages, a kids fishing tournament, arts and crafts, a big flea market, loads of raffles, and plenty of good festival food.

The event is a benefit for the Greene Acres Property Owners Association to thwart mosquito infestation of their lake. Last year, the dam there sprang a leak and they had to drain it for repair, which drained the fish population. Now they want to restock it to ensure that it has a healthy ecosystem, which means plenty of fish next year to eat all the mosquito larvae. You can go the Greene Acres website to find out more.

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UVA’s Lambeth Field area was the site of the aggressive fox attacks on August 26.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

It turns out that the little grey fox captured and sacrified for a rabies test died in vain, as the test that claimed its life appears, according to published statements from a health official, unable to provide a clean bill of health.

“It was a decision that was not really made rationally,” says local wildlife author Marlene Condon. “Just because it was the first fox to get into that cage doesn’t mean you can condemn to death without having good reason to do so.”

Statements by Dr. Lilian Peake, director of the state Health Department’s Thomas Jefferson District, indeed suggest that if the test were to help the bite victims or provide firm evidence about the absence of rabies, than it was as doomed as the captured animal.

Peake was quoted in a Daily Progress story after the fox’s death as saying that (more)

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Nelson County farmer Barry Wood, owner of Wood Ridge Farm, is now growing his watermelons for area school children.
PHOTO COURTESY LOCAL FOOD HUB WEBSITE

Thanks to the Local Food Hub, a non-profit distributor of locally grown food bankrolled by Coran Capshaw, John Grisham, the DMB’s Carter Beauford and other high-rollers, some area school children have jumped on the eat-local bandwagon.

On Monday, August 31, the Hub made its first delivery of fresh fruit for snacks to Greer Elementary, which included 125 pounds of peaches, 72 pints of blackberries, and 72 pints of raspberries, enough for two days of snacks for 530 children. The following day, the Hub served up 375 pounds of fresh peaches and 450 pounds of ripe watermelon to Clark, Johnson, and Jackson-Via, enough for 800 children to enjoy a morning snack.

Remarkably, all the food was grown within (more)

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Despite healthy-looking fur, the grey fox captured on Wednesday was euthanized.

After UVA’s recent bout of small mammalian terror, in which two students were bitten and a sweater was swiped, both the university and Charlottesville community can safely say they’ve seen an animal reined in as officials announced the capture and subsequent euthanization of a fox Wednesday. But was it justice? The capture has some people questioning the actions as rash and cruel, and wondering if it was the right fox— or merely an innocent animal unjustly handed a death sentence.

“It’s a shame to kill this animal to make it look like the authorities are doing something to protect the public,” says Crozet nature writer Marlene Condon, who was horrified (more)

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Hardly a road or bridge was undamaged in Nelson County.
PHOTO COURTESY OAKLAND-NELSON COUNTY MUSEUM OF HISTORY

While others celebrate the 40th anniversary of seminal 1969 events like Woodstock, Nelson County pauses for a more somber remembrance: the hellish night of August 19-20, 1969, when Hurricane Camille dumped more than 27 inches of rain in five hours and slid mountains, flooded streams, and took the lives of 125 people

One of the first confirmed deaths was below Wintergreen, where a 40-mph debris flow slammed into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Hawes Ewing. At 10am Wednesday, August 19, some of the people involved in rescue and recovery, such as Dr. Bob Raynor, who worked on identifying the dead (eight were never identified), will gather at the historic marker at the bridge on 151. Author Earl Swift, who wrote The Tangierman’s Lament, will interview survivors. (more)

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