We’re in early winter here in Maryland with no snow to speak of, so far. It’s a busy time for the CSA as the farmers, Erin and I, and all the volunteers gear up for the Spring/Summer season. We’re committed to delivering local, certified organic vegetables (and fruit, flowers and herbs) to our neighbors in nearby DC and surrounding counties. We are marketing for an amazing group of farmers – the Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative. This will be the 10th year for Sandy Spring CSA (founded by Erin and Robert True), but the farmers of LFFC have been growing for generations.

Learn more about CSA in general and Sandy Spring CSA in particular. Click here to find a CSA near you.

Click here to request Soulpajamas press info and interviews.

This 4 minute video is just too good not to share. TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski has developed open source hardware – that means he and others have built sustainable tools and machines at a fraction of the cost of commercial versions. His Open Source Ecology group identified 50 important machines that they think are essential for modern life to exist, things like tractors, bread ovens, circuit makers, etc. Then they set out to design an open source, DIY version of each that anyone can build and maintain. They call it the Global Village Construction Set.

Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000)

breaking the record for largest uke ensemble

I’m doing my part to help Strathmore break the record tonight.

Strathmore is concluding its summer concert series with UkeFest 2011 and they are putting out an open call to DC musicians to help them break the Guinness World Record for Largest Ukulele Ensemble. To reach their goal, they need more than 851 ukulele players to perform one song in unison on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 7 p.m. The current title is held by uke players at the London Uke Festival. Washington, DC will steal this most auspicious title at promptly 7:30 p.m.; uke players must register to participate by 7 p.m. Ukuleles will be available for purchase on site beginning at $30 from House of Musical Traditions.

Well, SoCo ’11 is over and it was a great one. They just keep getting better. Spirits were high as old friends reunited and new long term friendships were easily made.

I started the trip by arriving two days early, so I could visit Rev Sheryl Myers and provide special music for her church, Unity of the Heartland in Olathe, Kansas. Erin stayed home, so it was a solo gig for me. But luckily for me, Sheryl is a great singer, so she helped me on a few songs and we sang a song that she and I wrote with Rev Eileen Goor, several years ago called Open, Empty, Ready to Receive.

It was blazing hot with swampy humidity in the midwest, just like it’s been in DC, but that didn’t keep anyone down. A couple of us found refuge in the Unity Village pool, which was awesome. Roger Tomhave and I led a song circle the first night, which was a great ice breaker. One highlight was when Karen Taylor-Good was presented with the 2011 Grace Note Award. Another was the concert with Megon McDonough, Jan Garrett and JD Martin.

More photos to come.

1. We finally have the new CD in our greasy little hands

OK, this is actually really big news to us. Our new CD, Reaching for the Sun, has been available online (for listening and downloading) for several months now, but it has not been available in good old-fashioned physical form (CD) until this week. You can get one at a gig and if you’re really anxious, just email us and we’ll ship you one immediately. CDs are available for purchase online now at CD Baby and at Bandcamp.

Meanwhile, you can listen to the whole thing for free at our bandcamp site and download any or all.

2. SoCo ’11

Sound Connections, here I come. Without Erin, I will be venturing to Lee’s Summit, MO (or Unity Village, to be precise), where I will hob nob with all my fellow musicians in the Positive Music and New Thought Music worlds. This year I’m going to go for broke by joining the Unity World Choir. I’ll also be sharing the songs from the new CD whenever possible, and listening to lots of great live music by songwriters and musicians from around the world.

3. Top songwriting honors

My co-writer Roger Tomhave and I won a ‘top honor’ in the Indie International Songwriting Contest for our song Calling All the Children Home. Yea!
Listen to it here.

From Food Politics by Marion Nestle – USDA has changed the way it reports the country’s annual expenditures on the food system. It has just released the Economic Research Service’s new food dollar report. As the report explains, it is designed to answer the question “For what do our food dollars pay?”

Here’s another way to look at it, also from USDA.

We think more of our money should go directly to farmers and less to packaging, fuel for long distance transportation, advertising, etc. That’s why we support the CSA model.

Read the full article here.

Here’s a prototype of a gift bag we’re designing. Now that we’re about to introduce our 2nd full length CD, we thought we should make it easier to walk away with your purchases. It’s small, but big enough to hold our 2 full length CDs (Dreaming a New Reality and Reaching for the Sun), plus our EP, and the karaoke version of Dreaming a New Reality.

The reusable bag is made of 25-30% recycled content and is itself recyclable and biodegradable. Of course, we encourage you to support the environment by bringing your own reusable bag.