Whole Life Magazine

October/November 2013

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Join the Hive teach the basics of urban beekeeping. "We try to lead by example so people see that you can keep bees treatment-free and help preserve the healthy genetic stock of bees in the city," says McFarland. "Turning big agriculture around is not going to happen right away, and what we do in the city on a smaller level is really important." Adam Novicki has a similar mission. As a waiter for Wolfgang Puck's Spago for seven years, Novicki says he was continually inspired by the restaurant's high-quality ingredients and the farms from which they came. "I took a strong interest in vegetables, citrus and gardening in general," says Novicki. "My now-wife Therese and I had a fairly big lot of 10,000 sq. ft., so we planted 30 fruit trees and have explored [farming] from there." The result? T&A Farms, an eight-hives-strong apiary and urban orchard just across I-5 from Dodger Stadium that supplies honey to a number of local restaurants, including Eveleigh and Goldie's. "Our goal is to emulate the model of success we've seen with Chino Farms and Churchill Orchards," says Novicki. "We want to be a supplier of high-quality honey and eventually have land in Ventura, where we'll grow specialty crops that are of interest to high-end restaurants." Novicki has a unique vantage point of both urban and rural agriculture, as he currently spends weekends in Los Angeles and school days in Fresno studying plant science at Fresno State University. As part of his Masters program, Novicki is conducting Project Apis-funded research in which he'll experiment with bee-friendly oilseed cover crops. "In a monoculture where 600 acres of only almonds are planted, bees get only one nectar source," explains Novicki. "It's about nurturing bio-diversity and giving bees more diverse nutrition." • Plant pollinator-friendly plants in your garden and minimize or eliminate use of chemical pesticides. • Support local honey, and urge your favorite restaurant to use local honey. • Attend a mentoring session offered by Honey Love (www.honeylove.org) or Backwards Beekeepers (www.backwardsbeekeepers.com), an L.A. group of organic beekeepers and rescuers, now branching into other cities. • Support pollinator preservation efforts, such as that of the Xerces Society. www.xerces.org GETTING LEGIT Along with the work HoneyLove is doing to educate Angelenos about urban beekeeping, they're also working closely with experts like David King to legalize the practice in Los Angeles. (Currently, beekeeping is legal in L.A. County, but not in the city proper.) Their hope is that our city will follow in the footsteps of New York and Austin, where urban citizen beekeeping is legal. So far, 16 of 95 neighborhood councils have signed on in support, and McFarland's goal is to have the ordinance passed by Valentine's Day. "We want to mimic what they did in Austin, which was a call to rescue the bees rather than exterminate," says McFarland. "Santa Monica also just legalized it, so we're taking a lot [of cues] from their ordinance." King, too, is optimistic about beekeeping becoming a common, legal practice in Los Angeles, saying they've taken "vital steps" toward making it happen. As urban beekeeping continues to grow, he envisions a world where every block of the city has its own hive and beekeeper handling local honey production. This will support the city in continuing to produce high-value crops and organic, fresh vegetables and fruit. "The economic shift will be fairly pronounced in awareness of the individual as a producer versus a consumer," says King, who teaches a Backyard Food Production course for UCLA Extension. "Salvation is happening in the cities—agriculture as an enterprise will be saved by urban agriculture, and the bees will be part of that salvation." october /november 2013 27

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