This year the Maker Faire, held at San Mateo's County Fair Grounds, featured a great many enticing ideas. Walnut shell-powered popcorn makers, feminist cars decopaged with bras, grasshopper-shaped electric bicycles, and a life-sized game of mousetrap - nothing was off limits. The collage of people was as inspiring as the creations themselves; families, techies, hippies, geeks, and people of all ages and colors intermixed in the stew of DIY fascination. And of course the topic of food was not left off the menu.
Behind the "learn how to solder" tent, and caddy-corner to the welded fire sculptures from Oakland's Crucible was an area designated for sustainable foods. Mushroom farms you can grow at home shared space with Ritual Roaster's coffee tasting, weave around the behind to find living walls filled with edible plants and bromiliads growing out of felted pockets. Sprout Seed Library displayed seed saving techniques and offered membership to their group, wherein you can borrow seeds and agree to let a few of your own plants go to seed to bring back to the library. There was a group called Homegrown giving out kale pesto recipe cards and teaching the easy ways to "eat your zip code," and strawberry planters made from two fused plastic barrels. There was the local beekeeper's guild, a grow-your-own algae table, Local Dirt, lessons on home soap-making, and a group of people interested in living wildly using primitive wilderness skills. One table focused on water-saving techniques, and had a miniaturized display of an easy-to-build rain water retrieval system, together with a chicken coop they'd built that filtered rain water from the corrugated steal roof directly to the chicken's water dish inside. An especially inspiring group showed off their urine-diverting toilet seats, and demonstrated sanitary ways to use urine, one of natures most fabulous fertilizers, to increase crop production not only in your own garden but in family farms across Africa. One cruise around these tables could easily shine a light on the world-wide implications of food - growing it, eating it, and sustaining it - and inspire even the most determined neigh-sayer that it is increasingly important to be aware of what you eat, for the health of you, your family, and of future generations. As long as new creations can still be displayed like this, and audiences inspired, there will be hope for sustaining global food production.
Future Maker Faire locations include Austin, TX, New York, Ann Arbor, MI, Detroit, MI and the UK too.
Below is a slide show of some of the sights from Maker Faire's sustainable food area.
Enjoy, and find me on Facebook, or read my books, including the new one GrassRoutes Guide to Seattle.
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