The Noyo Food Forest is having their annual Earth Day celebration this Saturday at the Learning Garden. This four hour event is a fundraiser for the Farm-to-School and Youth Intern programs that the Noyo Food Forest operates year-round. We partner with the Noyo Food Forest throughout the year, and we especially love being a part of this annual event in Fort Bragg.

15th Annual Earth Day Event
Saturday, April 20, 12 - 4 PM
At the Learning Garden at Fort Bragg High School on Dana Street.

This Earth Day event is free and geared toward everyone in the family. There will be live music, and you can participate by putting down a bid for the silent auction, paying entry to bouncy houses, and tasting goodies from local chefs. This is one of the most fun events that happens in the city of Fort Bragg every year. Local organizations and nonprofits are a big part of this event, and you’ll see booths and representatives from the Noyo Marine Science Center, the Mendocino Land Trust, our Mendocino County state parks and many more important parts of the coastal community.

Thanksgiving Coffee will be serving up samples of our Bee Bold Blend, our new Nitro Coffee, and the Noyo Food Forest will be selling 12oz bags, as well. All the proceeds benefit the Noyo Food Forest and their important work here in our community. We are very happy to be a part of this awesome event. For more information, visit the Noyo Food Forest Earth Day page on their website, and RSVP on Facebook to share with your friends. Join us on April 20 – see you at the Learning Garden.

The Bee Bold Alliance (BBA) tells a vibrant tale of World renewal. Like the exploratory mycelium, the BBA reaches out and connects diverse aspects of our community to link into the same wisdom stream. This wisdom tells the tale of a path of green. As we grow with up to 40 members, so too our tools expand.

Henry Thomas - Director of Bee RYL Productions 2022

The newest facet of the BBA is our Regenerative Youth Leaders Productions, for short Bee RYL Productions. The team is led by Henry Thomas, alumni of the Tech department at the Mendocino High School. The Bee RYL youth will produce multimedia based on resilience with nature, and the importance of our biodiversity for the survival of our local ecosystems.

The project is underway with the support of the Mendocino Film Festival, Hope 4 Natives, and the Mendocino High School. The first pilot is about two Forest Grandmothers, Pricilla Hunter and Polly Girvin, who have actively been working to protect the Redwood Forests for 40 years.

WATCH THE FILM - FOREST GRANDMOTHER - Produced by the Bee RYL Productions

This all came about synchronistically at a recent rally to protect the Jackson State Demonstrations Forest. Inspired by Tribal Chairman Micheal Hunter's talk, I approached him about collaborting with the BBA. The ensuing dialogue was full of possible pathways where we both sought mutual benefit for the tribes and the lands of Mendocino. The direct result led to the creation of The Bee RYL Productions. In alignment with the primary goal of Hope 4 Natives, which is to establish an active online cultural library, the BBA will help train Pomo youth with multimedia tech skills to support this goal.

The Regenerative Youth Leaders Productions generates a path to valuable job skills through the creation of valuable media to tell stories of resilience and sustainability.

No sooner had the nucleus of the project been formed when I had the pleasure of meeting the new Executive Director of the Mendocino Film Festival (MFF), Angela Matano. There was an immediate outpouring of inspiration to build a partnership and create a wonderful base for the youth project to grow. With the support of MFF’s Technical Director, Marshall Brown, and in alignment with MFF’s vision, Bee RYL Productions will help to offer opportunities for filmmakers and locals to celebrate the power of film, art, and story in the beautiful, natural setting of Mendocino.

The subsequent Bee RYL projects will include:

• Interviews of prominent elders in the community
• Round table discussion on best practices for sustainability
• Support material for the REGENERATIVE YOUTH LEADERS to take action
• Multimedia for all platforms

It has been said that when you truly focus on something you can find the entire universe hitched to it, and that is certainly the case here.

The BBA is a central ring that emanates from Mendocino, sending a signal to each heart to help the seeds of thought sprout and grow a future full of diversity, and food for all. We are working together to tell our story well, and that story is about choosing the path of green.

Thank you to our co-sponsors for the Bee RYL pilot: Coyote Valley Tribe, Fortunate Farms, Sweetwater Inn and Ecospa, Cafe Beaujolais, Corners of the Mouth, Princess Seafood, Mendocino Trail Stewards, and all the support of the volunteers who make this happen.

Give 20% to the Bee Bold Alliance when you buy a Bee Bold Cause Coffee in Dark and Medium, or Decaf. We have raised over $21,000 to support biodiversity and local food security to date.

Read about THE NATIVE CINEMA inspired by this project.

A momentous action for gender equality and economic justice came into being and called to mind the roots of fair trade. Thanksgiving Coffee Company had the privilege of being at its epicenter when it began eight years ago in 2013 .

For 20 years Thanksgiving has purchased green coffee beans from the farmer co-operative Soppexcca in Jinotega, Nicaragua. Under the leadership of Fátima Ismael who believes that ‘woman’s independence can only be achieved through economic autonomy and awareness,’ Soppexcca became the first coffee farm to enact an initiative to pay women for their unrecognized work.

Thanksgiving Coffee Companies Co-founder Joan Katzeff wrote about her visit to Nicaragua in her post Women in Coffee part one.

This initiative was created with Etico, the Ethical Trading Company in 2013 and was part of the agricultural cooperatives, charities, and consumer companies they work with for one common goal – to raise the quality of life for those who most need it. In this case, the focus was on the unpaid work of women who make up 49.58% of the world’s population, yet are disproportionately represented among the most marginalized.

Despite making significant, often unrecognized, contributions to their local economies and to economic development, women face multiple and overlapping barriers in terms of access to education, information, decision-making power, or earning power.

To understand these limitations we need to look at how gender equality plays out in the economic landscape of the 21st century. When the GDP (Gross Domestic Products) was created in 1953, the global economy has only included transactions where money changed hands. According to a recent UN Report, the monetary value of unpaid care work is estimated to be 10 to over 50 percent of the GDP. An article from B of A reported in May 2021 this total was estimated to be $11 trillion per year.

If we look on a global scale it is estimated that 2/3 of the world’s work is unrecognized and uncompensated, and women do between 60-70% more of that work than men.

(For a great overview take a look at this video The unpaid work that GDP ignores — and why it really counts by Marilyn Waring.)

The Nicaraguan initiative aims to address the link between paid and unpaid work. For Thanksgiving Coffee Company this translates into an additional $0.10 per pound above the standard price paid for green coffee. As of 2021, this has totaled $30,000 paid into the women’s fund.

The Cooperative uses these funds to empower women by making organizational, financial, and educational resources available to them. Here are a few examples: Independence and security of having savings in their name, more women are joining the cooperative as full members, a positive example of development for youth and the next generation.

The groundbreaking Unrecognized Work of Women Fund is exactly the type of work that is built into the heart of our mission, to use coffee for social, environmental, and economic justice. The women of Soppexcca say it’s working, and we see the change. If you want to go deeper into the origin you can read the doctoral paper “Pricing Fair Trade Products to Include Unpaid Labour and Empower Women – the Example of Nicaraguan Sesame and Coffee Cooperatives” by Felicity Butler, Catherine Hoskyns, Nicholas Hoskyns.

He was on the wrong end of a lasso being held by Clark Gable. The horse was bucking and raising up on his hind legs, pulling desperately away from his capture. Marilyn Monroe was pulling on Clark’s hand pleading for the horses freedom. Clark was determined to get his horse and another payday. The Name of the Movie was The Misfits and was about three Aging Cowpokes who once made their living capturing Mustangs and selling them into the slaughter houses for meat. In this movie they complained about how the horses were no longer in abundance , hard to find and it was impossible to make a decent days pay capturing the ‘things’. Maralyn was as beautiful as the horses eyes, fierce now but with long lashes and deep deep soft eyes. Marilyn was beautiful but it was the Mustang, fighting for her freedom, that stole my heart,

Today, 58 years later there is a similar story playing out on the millions of square miles of rangeland between the western slope of the Rocky Mountains and the Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevadas. Today it is not aging cowboys in Pick up trucks and lassos , but Federal Agents in Helicopters rounding up entire herds of free horses and burros and their children, often in the chaos separating family members or driving the horses to their death in the frenzy. Hay Feds, what’s the problem?

The round ups gather the horses into corals so they wont compete for the space grassland feed out there on the range. Thet range is for the Beef Cattle ! Our government leases our citizen owned land to cattle ranchers they can make money selling beef to our meat eating society of which I must admit , I am one. The cost of feeding jailed Mustangs is estimated to be in the billions. And why, when the 1970 Congress afforded Mustangs America’s protection, has all the Bureau of Land Management continued to harass the best symbols of freedom we have ?

Yes, it happened for me long ago in a movie theatre but last October, on the way from Northern California to Phoenix to play baseball , I pulled my car onto a a sandy dirt road to nowhere and drove into the dessert just to see what was out there on that dirt road to nowhere. About five miles in, there they were ! Three magnificent free roaming Mustangs …and they were looking at me from a hill about a home runs distance away. I stopped, my heart jumping , I exited my car and laid down on the very hot sand and stared back. Finally, the circle was complete. I saw them alive and free.

Who belongs on that land we, as citizens own but have delegated the responsibility for their safety to The Bureau of Land Management to secure ? And why has the BLM chosen to represent the Cattle Industry and not our Mustangs?

When I discovered that others of my kind were fighting for them too, we joined the American Wild Horse Campaign and created a coffee package to tell coffee lovers whose side we were on. As with our other Cause Coffee programs, we wanted to empower our customers to help raise funds and awareness for this important work.

Horse and stuntman in the 1960 film "The Misfits"

When we are a bit further past this COVID-19 Pandemic we are planning a visit, jointly with AWHC staff, to visit and see these magnificent spirits up close. I hope you will be able to come with us. Until then, buy their coffee and know you are on the bus with us. And let me use that old expression , “The steak is as good as the sizzle “ when I say that the coffee inside the package is as good as it gets. You be the judge.

The American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) is dedicated to preserving American wild horses and burros in viable free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage.

Since 2004, this organization has been raising awareness and making change for America’s wild horses. Thanksgiving Coffee Company has partnered with them to create Wild Grounds, a cause coffee to save the wild horses.

The best coffee is grown the traditional way— slowly, under a canopy of shade from taller native hardwood trees. Shade-grown coffees are carefully tended, harvested, and processed by people who know and love coffee, and who depend on it for their livelihoods.

Traditional shade-grown coffee really is a win for everyone: amazing coffee flavors, a fair wage for the coffee farmers’ hard work, and a lush natural habitat for migratory birds. So much good comes from a just cup of coffee.

By 1996, the United States forests had run out of hardwoods such as oak, ash, maple, cherry, and all the wild fruit and nut trees. These are important woods used in furniture making, home building, veneers for plywood, doors, window frames and a host of other minor but important uses.

The timber industry needed another source of hardwood, so they targeted the temperate rainforests where coffee was grown. The coffee tree is a shade loving plant that withers in the sun and needs shade to be a healthy producer of the coffee fruit. Mahogany and a dozen other hardwood varieties were there for the loggers if only they could convince coffee farmers to cut down their trees.

The destruction of these native hardwood forests is a long story of deception. Governments, in collaboration with multinational corporations, set out to convince farmers to grow their coffee in the sun, claiming that yields would increase and incomes would rise.

Without the leaf litter from the big hardwood trees to fertilize the soil every year coffee trees at Nicaragua Coffee Farms would need oil-based fertilizers. This is how the petrochemical companies became involved. Now with more sunlight reaching the ground, weed killers would become essential. This is how herbicide producer Monsanto became involved. Without the forest habitat for migratory songbirds, natural pest controls were lost. This is how the need for chemical pesticides became essential.

The big chemical companies found new markets and the timber companies gained new inventories of almost unlimited, inexpensive hardwoods. The coffee farmers paid for all this with higher costs, lower quality coffee, toxins entering the water supply, and a 90% loss of biodiversity on their farms.

Preserving these precious jungle forests not only protects biodiversity, but it’s also our greatest asset in mitigating the effects of climate change.

The Smithsonian’s Bird Friendly® certification is the most rigorous environmental certification possible for coffee, and the only one that justifies the use of the much-abused term “shade-grown.”
Based on years of scientific research, the SMBC has developed strict criteria for evaluating shade coffee farms. An independent, third-party inspector determines whether a farm meets these criteria or not. Only those farms that also meet organic certification standards are eligible to be certified Bird Friendly®.

Protect biodiversity, with your morning Cup