Category: Strong Women Building A Gentle World

The Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen-- It’s not always easy to find organically grown produce, but one nonprofit group called The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has compiled a list of the 12 fruits and vegetables that are the most pesticide-contaminated and are to be avoided if they’re not organically grown. The group updates the list of the Dirty Dozen every year. The list includes strawberries, spinach, kale/collard and mustard greens, peaches, pears, nectarines, apples, grapes, bell and hot peppers, cherries,…

If your natural surroundings are anything like mine, there is an untapped bounty of plants unrecognized for their nutritional and medicinal benefits. That’s what Sarah Lucas — a farmer, forager and teacher with Harlem Valley Homestead in Wingdale, N.Y. — told me when she visited my home. Almost everything I dismissed as a weed — noxious or benign — has a useful side, we just need to recognize it. Goldenrod, dandelion, garlic mustard, lady's thumb, knot weed, dock, even my…

When ecommerce spiked during the pandemic, consumers started worrying about the packaging that products were being shipped in. Were there eco-friendly choices? One company that designs for recyclability is EcoEnclose. Womanswork customers will recognize their green bird logo. Recently I interviewed Saloni Doshi, a business leader who has been on the frontline of this issue for seven years. As CEO and co-owner with her husband of the Colorado-based packaging company, she’s deep into sustainability research and making sure their products…

We’re at the Audubon Center in Sharon, Connecticut.  Lynn Martin pulls on a pair of Womanswork leather gloves and takes Mandy the red-tailed hawk on to her hand. Mandy lives at Audubon due to an eye injury that prevents her from living in the wild. Most of the birds there were found injured in the wild and were brought to be rehabilitated or protected if they couldn’t be released. She talks softly to Mandy, getting to know her as she…

In the agriculture-based culture of the Oneida Nation, to which Toni House and her family belong, plants are sometimes referred to as younger sisters and older sisters. Humans and plants are often considered equals. “We learn to listen to the earth rather than try so hard to change it to fit our ways,” says her daughter Jasmine Jimerson. In this ecosystem, humans try to replicate what they observe in the natural world, and then make small adjustments.  It’s a system…

Ashley Fromm, the youngest member of a four-person partnership at Root Pouch in Hillsboro, Oregon, didn’t set out to change the world when she graduated from college in 2008, but that’s exactly what she and her partners are doing. Ashley, along with her godfather, his wife and her sister, are equal stakeholders in a company that manufactures fabric growing pots made of recycled plastic bottles.  Their company is so in sync with the times that the words “landfill” and “gardening”…

Growing up in Colorado Chelsea Willis’ mother would tell her “get your hands in the dirt. It grounds you.”  Chelsea recognized the wisdom of these words at a young age, and never forgot them. After completing a degree in somatic psychology, a discipline that focuses on processing trauma through movement (body-based therapy rather than talk therapy), Chelsea moved to Oregon and began working with teens who had been incarcerated and were transitioning to semi-independent living. She was also doing some…

The vegetable garden at Bunny Williams’ property in Falls Village, Connecticut, where professional gardener Tricia van Oers is employed, is all about relationships. Bunny calls Tricia 'the soul of the garden' and says she has never eaten so well. Tricia is equally complimentary of her employer. “Bunny lets me feel a sense of ownership of the garden. She allows for playfulness and freedom within the established design of the garden,” says Tricia. Their paths first crossed in the summer of…

Kate Blairstone is no shrinking violet. As an illustrator she approaches her subjects with the exuberance of a person who is curious about everything. Before she draws a plant or an animal, she wants to know more about the community they are a part of and the relationships that inform their world. As a gardener she has a floriferous sense, so everything is densely packed in her Portland, OR garden. She buys plants small but they grow up fast in…

One of Yolanda Burrell’s happiest childhood memories is of climbing the peach tree in her maternal grandmother’s garden in Los Angeles to pick peaches that were the size of tennis balls, as she remembers them. Early memories like these have informed the way she views the landscape today. “Everything we grow in this climate has to do double duty,” she says. “Water is scarce so I feel that it should be used to grow food rather than ornamentals exclusively.” [caption…