Closeup of a Lake Effect Near-Miss
I’ve written a bit about my fascination with the “lake effect” weather phenomenon. The photo above, which I took early this morning, gives a hint at how narrow these snow bands tend to be, and how hard it is for forecasters to predict exactly where they’ll set up.
That bank of snow-producing dark clouds was probably less than two miles from Chicago’s Lake Michigan shoreline. Yet it kept chugging due south, missing the city, until it brushed the south end of the lake around Gary, Indiana, then dissipated.
Such a curious thing, that lake effect.
Help Advance IL Bill To Reduce Nutrient Pollution
The Illinois Stewardship Alliance — our local food community’s leading policy advocate — is highlighting a bill under consideration in the Illinois legislature that would advance efforts to reduce nutrient and farm fertilizer runoff into the state’s and nation’s waterways.
The measure aims to put some muscle behind the state’s Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy. This plan was first promulgated in 2015, but it wasn’t until last year, in an action backed by the Alliance, that lawmakers enacted dedicated funding to implement the plan.
This year’s proposal, SB 3471, would go further by creating the Healthy Soils and Watersheds Initiative, which would provide clear directives on how the money approved last year should be spent.
Read more in the Alliance’s release that follows, and click the Take Action link below to get involved on this important issue.
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You can help Illinois sustainable farmers have the resources and support they need to protect soil and our drinking water from farm pollution.
Urge your state senator to co-sponsor the Partners for Nutrient Loss Reduction Act (SB3471).
In 2015, the State of Illinois developed a plan to protect Illinois waterways from nutrient and farm fertilizer runoff, which is causing widespread algae blooms, contributing to unsafe drinking water, and leading to a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
The State’s plan is called the Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy (NLRS) and includes a series of goals to reduce nutrient runoff.
However, in the last few years, nutrient pollution has gotten worse not better.
In 2021, for the first time, lawmakers dedicated funding for the implementation of this plan -- a huge step forward. But the funding gave state agencies little direction.
This bill solves the issue by providing a clear directive on how to spend the NLRS funding by creating the Healthy Soils and Watersheds Initiative.
You can help protect conservation funding, keep soil building tools in farmers’ hands, and support Soil Water Conservation Districts by clicking the take action button below.
Become a Perennial Crop Top Chef
The Land Connection (another great Good Food nonprofit) is hosting a series of edible perennial cooking classes to help you learn all of the delicious ways you incorporate perennials into your diet. Sorry, missed the first one last week (on elderberry syrup and fire cider)… but The Land Connection will be posting the videos on its YouTube channel in the next couple of weeks.
The next program in the series is scheduled for Sunday, February 27 and will feature local plums! You can register at Common Ground Food Co-operative's website. A meal kit is available for purchase from the co-op, and if you aren't local to Champaign-Urbana, they’ll send you the ingredient and equipment list ahead of time so you can cook along with the instructor.
Honest Abe, A Can’t Miss Event for Hemp Growers
Our friends at McHenry County College’s Center for Agrarian Learning have a great event on Saturday, February 12 — Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday — on one of the hottest topics in our local farming community: Hemp Today: Growing and Marketing Industrial Hemp!
They are excited to present and host an amazing lineup of seven experts at this in-person session, which will take place from 11 a.m-2 p.m. in the college’s Luecht Auditorium in suburban Crystal Lake. A wide range of topics will be covered, and a "Hemp 101" Primer is available at 10 a.m.
The $35 registration fee includes a boxed lunch. Click the button below to register by the deadline on Thursday (February 10).