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.

Right now, bees are dying worldwide at an alarming rate. Why should you care? Because bees and other pollinators are an essential link in the food chain—our food chain.

The Bee Bold Alliance is a movement to help people attract and sustain pollinators in their home gardens, and at their place of work through habitat restoration and creation.

The Bee Bold Alliance blog will share stories that follow both the root causes for the disappearance of the bees and why it is so important to listen to the pollinators. Join us as we explore the diversity and abundance of our Pollinators of the world.

The Bee Bold Alliance is about helping people learn how to attract and sustain pollinators in their home gardens & at their place of work through habitat restoration and creation.

However we will not stop there, we are going to look deeper into the root cause of the disappearance of pollinators and discover modern solutions, that perhaps have previously been overlooked.

To find examples of a sustainable relationship with the earth, we will look to a regenerative ecology network that includes Traditional Ecology Knowledge (TEK). Incorporating the Indigenous place based wisdom gathered from around the world by those who develop and maintain a deep and ancestral connection to the land.

You too, are part of this solution, and I thank you for being here. Your support on this collaborative project is essential. Your participation will allow us to move forward for a bountiful future for all. If you are coffee drinker, make your coffee our Bee Bold Coffee and support pollinator protection in your local region every morning.

The Bee Bold Alliance came into focus in 2018, just after receiving a loud and clear message that it was “my time” be a steward of this land. Shortly after I received this message, Thanksgiving Coffee Company invited me to relaunch the Bee Bold project.

In revitalizing this campaign, what was once Bee Bold Mendocimo became the Bee Bold Alliance for Pollinator Protectors. The more I learned about my role in leading this campaign, the less I truly know. For example, now I understand it is not about being a “steward”, one who watches over the land, but more importantly one who actively gives to the land before one takes. To be full of gratitude for all we are given. To move through each day with honor and respect for the Earth that gives us every little thing that we need.

The Bee Bold Alliance is a reminder that you can give to the land you live on, to the land you do your business is on, and to the community you are part of. The vision is to build native food forest with Native People, with the seed savers, and to support the health of our new generations. The Bee Bold Alliance is about honoring the original care givers of these lands, and protecting the pollinators who allow us to grow the seeds of real food to nourish our bodies and our hearts.

As we develop this full spectrum ecology system for pollinator protection, we must include the practices of cultural ecology.

• Learn from the wisdom of our elders who remember and hold these stories of how we can adapt to our changing world.
• Revitalise the rich lineage of community song & dance as an important piece of the creation processes in our food system
• Remember and recreate connection to the spirit of life through our culture,
• How is sound health for our ecology manifested?

The Earth is full of abundance, the gifts of life are all around us, and all that we need to survive comes from this great planet Earth. How do we learn to live in harmony with the Earth and all its inhabitants? This is what I want to know, and I will take you through this journey of learning, as we travel many roads and look at many different tools that can be utilized in this work of rebalance, harmony, well being and sound health.

Here we are at the beginning of an emerging network for mutual support of our pollinator protectors: it will grow as we build it. Our World is as resilient as we make it. Let us find this new form of global coherence with the aid of one another. I hope you will join us on this journey. Become a pollinator protector with the growing Bee Bold Alliance here.

Follow the Evolution of the Bee Bold Alliance

2015: The 1st Bee Bold Advisory Committee

2016: Our 1st Bee Bold Event

2016: Fort Bragg becomes 1st Bee City USA in CA

2020: Introducing the Bee Bold Alliance

2020: The Way of the Bee Bold Alliance

2021: 4th World Bee Day 

2021: Live Feed- World Bee Day

2022: Expanding Our Story of a Growning Alliance

2022: Pomo Possibilities

2022: Night of Native Cinema

2023: Native Cinema 2023- Groundworks

2024: Native Cinema 2024

“Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.” Kahlil Gibran

There has been a lot of talk about pollinators in recent years, and how the declining populations of honeybees will affect food production. But have you ever wondered how it all started? When I began to write this, I had a rather broad understanding of pollination. However, the more I learned, the more questions I had. How did pollination come into being? Why is it so important to us now? Let’s take a deep dive into ancient history to learn a little more about the origins of pollination.

Pollination is believed to have begun around 130-150 million years ago. Basically, pollination is plant sex: the way plants spread and combine their genetic material to create new generations of plants. It is also essential to the production of fruit and seed crops that form the basis of our current food system. In the earliest forms of pollination, plants would scatter their pollen (male seed) to the wind and hope that a portion would land in the right spot on a female flower (stamen) and voila, there would be “chemistry”! However, this is an extremely unreliable way to reproduce. Although many plants still use this method, most have evolved into a primary relationship to collaborate with insects.

As early insects were flying around in search of food, they discovered how nutritious pollen was. Then several specialists decided to make pollen their main source and feed solely upon this nourishing golden dust of microspores. As the plants grew and thrived as a result of these relationships, they began to “sweeten the deal” by creating nectar for the services rendered. Flowers began to evolve bright colors to stand out and attract insects, distinguishing themselves from the green leaves and foliage that offered no sweet reward for the hard-working pollinators.

Millions of years have passed since the first flowers developed their pollination practice into the stunning displays we see today. This mutualistic relationship has changed the entire appearance of the earth, into the bright and colorful flowers and the vast variety of fruits and vegetables we all enjoy.

Learning the evolution of pollination from its ancient origins to the intricate and collaborative relationship that now occurs has been an inspiration to me. I hope the next time you receive a bouquet of flowers or taste the sweet juices of your favorite fruit, you think of the 130 million year journey it took to reach you.

A regenerative campaign from Thanksgiving Coffee to protect pollinators

The Magical and Miraculous Creation of Honey

The Way of the Bee Bold Alliance

Expanding Alliance: Native Cinema

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