Our hope is that Soil Kitchen 2012 may become a venue where citizens can enjoy free soup in exchange for testing soil samples from their neighborhood within an atmosphere of gradual progress, community commitment and resilience.  This exchange provides an entry point for dialogue and action available in the space through workshops, events and informal exchange. Soil Kitchen aims to provide: sustenance, re-established value of natural resources through a trade economy, and tools to inform and respond to possible contaminants in the soil.  Soil Kitchen will gather soil and creates a Philadelphia an anonymous brownfields map and soil contaminant archive.  In addition to serving soup using locally grown ingredients and testing soil, the event will act as a hub for a dialog about learning about the role of urban gardens, soil maintenance and energy efficient homes. We will include free workshops including urban agriculture, soil remediation, composting, lectures by soil scientists and ecologists and cooking lessons.  Part of our effort will include making use of previous similar testing efforts including the wildly popular soil kitchen event from 2011 (http://soilkitchen.org), the University of Pennsylvania faculty and student populations and also a range of print and electronic resources available through the federal government such as information on how to deal with and resuscitate vacant lots: http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/urbanag/resources.htm#handbook.

Through Soil Kitchen 2012, we hope make use of the Philadelphia-area concerned citizens and the large untapped student body at the University of Pennsylvania including student and faculty person-power.  We also will use Hill House, a resident dorm that has the theme of ‘Community Health’ to provide continuity to the effort through a university residential program.  We will also build on successful community based programs already in existence such as the community-based learning course “Urban Environments: Prevention of Childhood Lead” (Giegengack, 1999) where students learn about and learn to speak about the dangers of and prevention of community lead.  We were inspired by a past Soil Kitchen event by a group called Future Farmers, who, in 2011, started the original Soil Kitchen (www.soilkitchen.org) as well as by the past efforts of Rich Pepino and Bob Giegengack.

People generously volunteer their time and without them, Soil Kitchen 2012 would not be possible: 

Melissa Miles is an Environmental Biologist/Conservation Planner, Permaculture Designer/Teacher and Consultant. She has studied Biogeochemistry, Green Building and Sustainable Design at the graduate level and has served as Organizer for the Eastern Pennsylvania Permaculture Guild. Additionally, Melissa manages The Permanent Futures Institute at Two Miles Micro-Farm -- a peri-urban, micro-farm and regenerative design and training center located in southeastern Pennsylvania. Melissa is a contributing author for The Permaculture Research Institute in Australia and writes on the subject of Sustainable Agriculture for the Philadelphia Examiner.

As a Faculty Fellows of the University of Pennsylvania Hill College House, Dr. Kent Bream and Dr. Lisa Lewis (Jane Willenbring too) hope to inspire freshman to work toward a goal of a sustainable, healthy world.  Dr. L. Lewis, R.N. is an Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania.  K. Bream, M.D. specializes in Family Medicine and Community Health and is the Associate Director of Predoctoral Education in Family Medicine.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been incredibly helpful, especially Joshua Barber and Carrie Deitzel.

Soil Testing

The University of Pennsylvania Department of Earth and Environmental Science’s mobile soil-testing lab will be on site at Soil Kitchen. The equipment includes a field-portable x-ray fluorescence (XRF) instrument will be used to test soil for inorganic metals. Tests will also analyze soil nutrients, texture and provide expert and novice information and advice to interested visitors.  

Instructions for proper soil sample collection can be found here.

Where

Cusano Environmental Education Center (http://www.fws.gov/heinz/ceec.htm)