Common Vision’s veggie powered fleet hit the road again this year as an example of one creative alternative to burning fossil fuels. Each vehicle on Fruit Tree Tour covered over 3,800 miles and together, they displaced 1870 gallons of diesel with cleaner, greener recycled Vegetable oil. Here is a music video celebrating the veggie experience, and the team of folks that keep the busses running. We hope you enjoy the music of The Human Revolution.

MichaelCommonVision

98.1 KISS FM in the Bay Area featured Megan and Leo on "Childhood Matters" talking about how Fruit Tree Tour was making a difference in the lives of children.



If the flash audio player is not working on your browser you can Click Here .

MichaelCommonVision

Each day on Fruit Tree Tour Common Vision brings a Green theatre performance that gets students stoked on planting trees in their communities. Here is a snippet from one of our performances at a benefit party in Chico. Over 11,000 students experienced this at their schools this year!

MichaelCommonVision

Common Vision was featured nationally on the "America in the Morning" radio show. We hope that the millions of listeners were in some way moved into service for the planet in their own neighborhoods. Thank you Jan Sluizer for coming out to the planting to share the vision with the country.

MichaelCommonVision

A new phenomenon has come to Fruit Tree Tour: Mural Art... Cubed. Kevin Buckland has been working with fellow collaborators to create fabric cubes, each side six square feet, that become the blank canvas for children and adults to express their vision for a sustainable future. The size of the cube represents the volume of Carbon Dioxide released from burning one gallon of gasoline. This premise challenges artists to envision a different world, one where less carbon dioxide is produced and where trees are more abundant. Kevin joined forces with Fruit Tree Tour during our stay in Sacramento and the cube became the main focus of our Expression Session workshop which also encourages the youth to be solution focused, envision the world they want to see, and express it through various forms including art, hip hop, and poetry.

The results were phenomenal, the kids enjoyed it and expressed themselves through some beautiful art while learning about environmental issues and searching for solutions. There was also an opportunity to paint a mural on a wall of Joyce Elementary School during an after-school program. With all this art making the Fruit Tree Tour crew was still excited to work on painting our own cube after long school days and had fun coming together to express our visions. Then Kevin left tour in order to bring the cubes that had been completed to a Sustainability Conference in Portland, Oregon where they were well received. Kevin returned to tour for the last week during our stay in the Bay Area. We expect to see the mural cube on future tours!

Annapurna

Annapurna

While in Fresno we had an awesome community planting at the Boys and Girls Club of Fresno in collaboration with three other local organizations - West Fresno Health Care Coalition, Tree Fresno, and Volunteers for Change, a nonpartisan group of Barack Obama supporters who came together for a Day of Service. In three hours the kids from the Boys and Girls Club, Common Vision Crew, Tree Fresno friends, and Obama supporters were able to transform a weedy overgrown garden into a neat and clean space and plant 14 fruit trees inspired by a soul music soundtrack by dj Jahson and then live West African drumming with master drummer from Guinea, Aly Diabate.

Annapurna

This NPR show on Fruit Tree Tour really captures the magic of the daylong program with the schools. NPR visited Nuview Elementary a school program sponsored by Amway's Nutilite and the One-by-One Campaign.




If the flash audio player is not working on your browser you can Click Here .

MichaelCommonVision

Never in the history of Fruit Tree Tour has Common Vision experienced such a thorough collaboration as we have with Amway's Nutrilite and the One by One Campaign. At every step of the way, from contacting schools, organizing program logistics, providing additional trees, and offering long-term orchard care the staff of this amazing company has shown impeccable dedication to their local community. It is through the One by One Campaign that Nutrilite and Amway sponsor and get involve in community events. Since 2003, One By One Campaign has impacted 6 million children through employees and distributors contributing 1 million employee volunteer hours and donating more than $70 million.

Nutrilite, a global company with local roots organized and sponsored 3 schools in Southern California this year. Riverside County’s Nuview Elementary School & Nuview Bridge Early College High School, and Buena Park’s Beatty Elementary School have three new orchards for a collective 70 fruit trees.

Experienced farmers from Nutrilite will work directly with parents and teachers to manage their new orchards, mulch and install drip irrigation. The diverse new orchards at these schools are destined for lots of yummy fruit for years to come. Thank you Nutrilte! If you can't view the below show, click here.

MichaelCommonVision

During our time in LA we spent a Saturday engaged in a day of orchard care continuing the 5-year annual collaboration between Common Vision's traveling caravan and Community Services Unlimited's local nonprofit in South Central LA. Started 30 years ago as a branch of the Black Panthers focused on bringing healthy food to the neighborhood, CSU has been active in South Central building gardens, educating youth and creating community. In 2004 CSU completed a Community Food Assessment that analyzed the socioeconomic factors that led to insufficient accessibility to nutritious food in their neighborhood. Common Vision’s collaboration with CSU began in 2005 when the veggie oil caravan came through and helped to install two schoolyard orchards. The rest is history. . . Find out more in this short film . . . .

Annapurna

Annapurna

Annapurna

Interdependent Project Radio delivers information, resources, education, networking, and entertainment for and about Sustainable Living and the Sustainability Movement. They are hosting Common Vision for weekly updates from the road!

MichaelCommonVision

We were able to fill to capacity the vegetable oil collection tank on our fueling truck on monday when we met up with Nico, a local Plant Drive straight vegetable oil conversion installer in Ventura. There we were able to gather 180 gallons of recycled vegetable oil that Nico had stockpiled from local restaurants. Our 7 vehicle fleet of 3 busses, 3 trucks, and a station wagon will be able to travel 250 miles collectively with this re-used kitchen grease. But first the oil must be heated, filtered, and transfered into all the vehicles by our state of the art high flow triple filter system and the know how of our veggie mechanic team.

Annapurna

We promise a video of this year’s Green Theatre performance will be posted soon. In the meantime- here is some audio of a scene from the show! In this clip- Fruit Tree Tour poets and musicians in residence, Jahsun and Sandra play the role of a farmer and a city dweller debating the merits of planting trees and growing your own food. Backed by the Common Vision Band!






Above is a slide show of the best stage pictures from our Green Theatre performance. (Trouble viewing? Click here.) As the scenes unfold we meet a time traveling professor and two companions who have come back from the future to warn of the effects of climate change. They break down the basics of the greenhouse effect and give some guidance as to how to help, leaving with some inspiring words -"Remember, our actions today create the future of tomorrow." Other characters include a bird who calls on people to listen to the earth's song, the farmer and city dweller, the earth, sun, moon, and comets. Of course the whole play culminates into a crescendo of Eco Hio Hop backed by the Common Vision Band rocking out and all the cast members up on the stage dancing.

MichaelCommonVision

This Valentine's Day also marked the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the MA Center and the first planting event of Fruit Tree Tour 2009. Common Vision has been working with international environmental organization, GreenFriends, to design the MA Center landscape as a model of sustainability. After focusing the fall and winter on rainwater harvesting strategies and reforestation plantings, the MA Center was ready to expand their orchards.

With a goal of 500 trees this year, the Common Vision team helped plant 185 apple trees in the first planting event of the tour. It is likely that the tour will return in April for another community planting.



Having trouble viewing slideshow? Click here.

MichaelCommonVision

Trouble viewing? Click Here. We are just now finishing up our time here at Isis Oasis, the second stop on Fruit Tree Tour Orientation. On this property there are a number of fruit trees, some of which were originally planted by Luther Burbank, an American botanist, horticulturist and a pioneer in agricultural science who developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55 year career beginning in 1872. Richard Channing, a resident at Isis Oasis offered to help us harvest cuttings from an old white fig tree that Luther Burbank planted on the property nearly 100 years ago. We climbed up in the fig to simultaneously prune the tree and take what was cut for further propagation of white fig trees across California at schools and communities. We will take these cuttings with us to plant at our Roots to Fruits Nursery at the Alpha Center in Santa Barbara where they will be cared for as they root and grow ready to be transplanted next year. We are super grateful for the opportunity to share these amazing strains of Figs with other fruit lovers. Thank you Isis Oasis!

Annapurna

Trouble viewing slides? Click here. After two months of extensive preparations, Fruit Tree Tour crew veterans and newcomers gathered in Hopland, CA to kick off the 2009 tour with a busy orientation schedule. Along with getting to know each other, learning about what to expect on a typical school day, trying out for various roles in the performance, and enjoying sumptuous vegan meals, there were also some projects with buses and support vehicles to finish up. Colton, a tour alumnus finished a magical transformation of the interior of the Jah Lioness Bus. Also two new support vehicles were converted to run on vegetable oil and joined tour, a pickup truck for hauling soil and a new utility truck for gathering vegetable oil with a triple filtration system, 35 gpm gathering pump and a 200 gallon crude veggie oil storage tank.
A big thank you to Brock and Sarah long time supporters who opened their home to us as the first gracious host home of 2009 along with their daughters Daya and Jah Lila. Some long awaited winter rains finally arrived which was fantastic for the Hopland area ecosystems but not so great when it was time to leave and we found that the buses had sunk into the patch of dirt where they were parked making taking off a muddy and slippery ordeal. Luckily we had the awesome power of the Dodge Cummins Turbo Diesel motor plus the driving skills of Leo Buc our alternative fuels expert and Hopland firefighter and Blair Philips the tour founder and bus driver extroidinaire. The support of the crew was also crucial, as an unofficial team building exercise unfolded with crew members gathering to push on the back of Jah Lioness while the Dodge pulled from the front. With all the buses miraculously unstuck we headed out to Isis Oasis, our next orientation location.
The Isis Oasis is a retreat center in Gyserville that also hosts a number of rare wild cats and exotic birds. After a tour of the white peacocks, ocelots, cervils, emus, and macaws, we got down to business hammering out the details of our performance and finishing the props with our beloved director Bridget Barsotti. We also delved deep into building curriculum for the expression session and drum group workshops. We are looking forward to going deeper into the tree-planting curriculum in preparation for our first community planting on Feb. 14th at the MA Center in San Ramon and our first school Feb 17th in Santa Cruz.

Annapurna

Common Vision has been supporting the GreenFriends Tree Planting Project this winter in a reforestation project that has planted over 900 trees so far. This project integrates permaculture water catchment strategies that will help to water this forest through its life.



Can't see slide show? It's a problem with Internet Explorer. > Get FireFox It's free and better.

MichaelCommonVision

Thank you to everyone who supported the recent series of Common VIision’s Benefit Concerts by volunteering, attending, and spreading the word! It was a fun and busy week with four concerts in four cities across Northern California. The events were attended by over 1000 people. The music ranged from world electronic to Country mystic jam rock! Artists included, Youssoupha Sidibe, Cheb I Sabbah, Lynx and Janover, Jah Levi, Freedom, Diane Patterson, Arjun and Guardians, The Human Revolution and Shakina. The events raised more than $14,000!

Thank you to Nutiva for your sponsorship of the Green Fest after party event and thank you for your continued support!

Also thank you to Zak Human for sharing his artistic genius in support of the project.
The fliers were beautiful!



Can't see slide show? It's a problem with Internet Explorer. > Get FireFox It's free and better.

MichaelCommonVision

Common Vision is continuing to support Amma's GreenFriends in their reforestation efforts at the Bay Area's MA Center. This summer Common Vision helped to establish a huge water harvesting feature to help sustain the trees through the summer. (read about this water harvesting) During the Thanksgiving week over 200 adults and children helped to plant 700 native trees and shrubs. Each of the species was chosen for its edible berries or is nutrient building capacity. The planting are the backbone of what will likely be the largest permaculture food forest in Northern California.

The dense planting of ground-cover, nitrogen-fixing shrubs and trees, berry producing bushes, and nut- and fruit-producing trees is an attempt to mimic Nature's natural processes - except in fast forward. It would take Nature some hundred years to transition from grass land to forest. With a little observation of Nature's principles and processes, we expect to establish the foundations of a resilient forest eco-system within the decade. In addition to Native trees and shrubs, we will also be including some non-native human favorites like apples, pears, pomegranates, persimmons, and jujubes (Chinese dates).

If you would like to get involved in this project go to Green-Friends.org.

MichaelCommonVision

Can't see slide show? It's a problem with Internet Explorer. > Get FireFox It's free and better.


Common Vision, recently orchestrated a momentous workshop at the MA Center in Castro Valley with international environmental organization GreenFriends. Geoff Lawton, considered by many to be the world’s best Permaculture Designer and Teacher, flew from Australia to teach this 3-day course titled “Permaculture and Reforestation: Harvesting Rainwater, Growing Food Forests, and Planting Ecosystems.” Over fifty course participants, including MA Center Residents and environmentalist from across California and Oregon, learned from Geoff how to harvest thousands of gallons of water in the landscape, design a resilient ecosystem, generate soil fertility, and produce food and timber in abundance.

The MA Center has almost 400 acres under its stewardship. Over 150 of these acres are treeless with a clay soil that has been compacted from at least a half century of intensive and insensitive cattle grazing practices. The compacted clay coupled with the lack of trees makes the ground very susceptible to slumps and slides in the rainy season. Yet, by the end of the summer the hillsides are crusted over with a think shell of dry, hardened clay. Deer, pigs, gophers, and voles graze and burrow for any food sources remaining at the end of the harsh, dry summer.

During the 3-day workshop, Geoff made clear that in order to grow trees on these hillsides we need to “fast-track” an ecological regeneration. While nature may take hundreds or thousands of year’s to recovery in this area, human beings can support the successive unfolding ecological processes and see recovery in less than a decade. First step, says Geoff, is water design. Without water there is no life. Before the cutting of trees and soil compaction by the cattle, this land was a living sponge that soaked rainfall into the ground. Currently the majority of rainfall tends runs fast along the surface into the valley and out to sea.

To help soak water into the landscape, Geoff led the group on an exercise to site, survey, and dig a massive ditch on contour (level no slope up or down) to catch rainwater running down the slopes, slow it down, spread it out, and soak it into the hillside. With the help of Rusty Davis and his excavator, the course dug over 500ft of this on-contour trench, known in permaculture as a swale. With each rain, even if it be moderate, the swale will sink over 10,000 gallons of water into the soil. This water slowly travels under the soil, and remains available throughout the summer for trees to drink and grow.

The MA Center is becoming a model of sustainable design for ecological regeneration and reforesting Bay Area hillsides. We are learning that through knowledge of how ecosystems evolve and a willingness to support nature’s processes, human beings can truly be a positive force in the environment. Common Vision looks forward to supporting the GreenFriends planting trees with diverse people from across the Bay Area and to inspire the larger community into compassionate action for Mother Nature.

MichaelCommonVision

Green LA is a non profit dedicated to unifying the environmental movement in Los Angeles. They strive to illuminate the vast spread of environmental organizations and projects at work in the city while promoting cooperation and broader grassroots participation. Green LA featured Common Vision in their five-minute trailer that is launching their project.

MichaelCommonVision