Today we’re launching a very special Community Project as part of Blog Action Day. This year the topic is Food and we’re inviting you to tell your food story using your own creative style. Download a special Blog Acton Day wallpaper and find out how to get involved in the Community Project, at the jump.
What is Blog Action Day?
Blog Action Day was first started in 2007 by Collis and Cyan Ta’eed, along with Leo Babauta. Each year it aims to bring much needed exposure to a worthy subject, and 2011 coincides with World Food Day so this year Blog Action invite you to join them to talk about food.
"We use food to mark times of celebration and sorrow. Lack of access to food causes devastating famines, whilst too much is causing a generation of new health problems. It can cost the world, or be too cheap for farmers to make a living.
The way we companies produce food and drinks can provide important jobs for communities or be completely destructive to habitats and local food producers. Food can give us energy to get through the day or contain ingredients that gives us allergic reactions.
Food can cooked by highly skilled chefs with inventive flair, or mass produced and delivered with speed at the side of road. It can be incredibly healthy or complete junk and bad for your health. It can taste delicious or be a locals only delicacy." blogactionday.org
Community Project : Create a Wallpaper that Shares Your Thoughts about Food
I’m excited to announce that we have a brand new community project launching today. The Vectortuts+ & Blog Action Day Wallpaper Project. This project aims to spark your imagination and showcase the work of our extremely talented community. Fire up your imagination and let’s get started!
All you need to do for this project is download the design template and customize the wallpaper template of your choice (We have Screen, iPad and iPhone). Add your work to the Vectortuts+ Facebook Group and tell your food story. We will showcase a selection of the entries on our blog.
Deadline if the 24th of October, so start drawing and tell us about your thoughts on food and the world around you.
Note: Because wallpapers are larger than the default Facebook image view, remember to upload the image in High Resolution.
We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
My Story – Urban Vegetable Garden
I’m part of a growing number of inner urban people turning their back yards into vegetable gardens, so the topic of food is very close to my heart. My visual response is a heart made from all the things I love about my garden, including Bees, Strawberries, Carrots and Corn.
I like to grow as much of my own fruit and vegetables as I can to boost the flavor and vitamins in the meals I eat, to reduce the distance the produce has to travel to arrive on my plate and to create a place I can relax and unwind after a hard day at the computer.
Wallpaper Downloads
As a special bonus for Blog Action Day, I’ve made my illustration available as a downloadable wallpaper for Screen, iPod and iPad, you will find the sizes and links below. Enjoy!
Here are some photos of my vegetable garden. Sean (aka Bucket’o’Thought) and I established the first 3 garden beds 3 years ago and have been slowly learning how to grow vegetables from seed, when to feed and harvest the crops and how to rotate what is grown in each bed to make the most of the nutrients in the soil and avoid pests and diseases. We have since added another 5 garden beds to keep the larger plants like Pumpkins from taking over the garden and utilizing walls and fences to protect Corn and Berries from strong winds.
Every year we chose something new to learn about growing fruit and vegetables, this year we have planted our first Loganberry cane, planned a "tea patch" with herbs such as Mint, Echinacea, Chamomile and Lemonbalm to make our own tea with and started to learn the fine art of striking (taking cuttings from plants to grow new ones.)
One of the first lessons we learned was the importance of Bees. Bees help to pollinate the fruit and vegetables which in turn creates larger crops for us to harvest. To attract the Bees we make sure to include flowers such as Marigolds, Lavender and Sunflowers. We also make sure that we plant as many herbs and edible flowers as possible to produce the most food from our small back yard.
In most parts of the world there is a concern that many colonies of Bees are disappearing from the landscape. This is due to a problem known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Colony collapse disorder, known as CCD is when the worker bees from a beehive or wild European honey bee colony disappear. This causes some very real problems where agricultural crops cannot be sufficiently pollinated. While the reason for this hasn’t been pinpointed yet, it can be attributed to a number of factors including commercial pesticides, mites that attack the hive and insect disease. We love our Bees and are very lucky to have them.
Summer is by far the best time for the garden and it’s always a pleasure to go and pick the vegetables for the evening meal. Every season we have to seed, harvest and remove plants, and everything depends on the weather and being able to plan for the future.
One year, about two weeks from harvesting a very large crop of vegetables a freak hail storm swept over Melbourne and smashed everything in our garden. We had massive holes in all the foliage, the pumpkins developed scars and infections and the tomatoes were smashed to smithereens. Losing all of our vegetables in one weather event was hard, but we also realized how lucky we were to live in a country with such an abundance of food. Having our own vegetable garden has really opened our eyes to how hard it is to supply fresh fruit and vegetables all year round, especially when it can lost so easily.
This strawberry may look small, but the flavor was amazing. The difference between store bought produce and home grown defiantly makes it worth the wait. The commercial growing process often uses synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides. We use compost made from our kitchen scraps which is high in nutrients for the garden which helps to create fruit and vegetables that are full of flavor and healthier to eat.
Marigold brighten up the garden and help to condition the soil. We plant marigolds to deter pests such as Nematodes (tiny parasitic worms that eat the roots of plants and kill them) and attract beneficial insects such as Lady Bugs. The flowers are also edible and great in salads.
How to Get Involved!
Would you like to participate in the Blog Action Day Wallpaper Project? It’s easy, all you need to do is Download the Template, join the Vectortuts+ Facebook Group and get creative!
How to Make a Blog Action Day Wallpaper
- Download the Design Templates
- Draw your image onto the template or templates that you want to use, you can be as creative as you like. We want to see creative and fun projects so go crazy and tell your story!
- Upload your design to the Vectortuts+ Facebook Group with a short description of the design and your thoughts on the topic of food.
Guidelines:
- Artwork can be any style or theme as long as it’s vector and 100% your own work.
- You don’t have to spend hours and hours on your piece, the project’s aim is to be fun, fast and individual.
- You may submit more than one design
- When you publish your work on Facebook, please include one or two paragraphs about the piece of work you have created.
- Have Fun!
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