LOHAS company CEO’s and Founders discuss innovation in LOHAS businesss at the 2009 LOHAS Forum.

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Here you find everything you always wanted to know about Obama’s garden, but were afraid to ask. This nice graphic is a  collaboration between GOOD Magazine and Always With Honor and inspires me, to grow my own garden, but with tomatoes, because I love them.

This March, the Obamas planted an organic  garden at the White House, which ‘is the first one since Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden there during World War II”. The vegetables  have been given to area soup kitchens and were used by the Obamas.

I think growing an organic garden is a great symbol for Obama’s green politics and therefore a sign how the world can be changed by small steps.

In case you don’t know what that brown Muppet in the picture is, it’s an alpaca. Her name is Bell.

Working for hessnatur for so long gave me a great insight into natural fibers, including alpaca, but I’ve only come across the actual animals in zoos until now. I neither spin, nor knit, so I thought I would join in on Alpaca Farmgirl’s Fiber Arts Friday by finally visiting the Happy Valley Alpaca Ranch, one of our local alpaca farms. Mike and Linda were great hosts, introducing my family and I to their herd as they were family themselves. And that they were. I soon discovered that I could recognize each animal not only by their color, but also their behavior, body language and even “facial expression”.

In general, alpacas have curious, cat-like personalities. Happy Valley’s herd is quite active, engaging in their own form of bumper-cars every evening for the fun of it. It surprised me that they bear young for almost a year before giving birth to just a single cria (baby alpaca). Apparently, the animals can adapt to live just about anywhere, and are very gentle on their environment.

Linda said she gets about three to six pounds of fiber from each fleece, shearing them once a year with a specialist who shears the animals freely standing (which creates a lot less stress for the alpaca). Alpaca fiber is not only snuggly, silky soft, it is also hollow, making it extremely warm. Although the white alpacas produce the finest and densest fleeces, and they are the best for dyeing, I personally like the earthier colors. Alpacas produce about twenty two variations of natural color all on their own!

It’s neat to see the enthusiasm revolving around alpaca fiber. “Chasca” has created some very visually interesting yarns, even working cria fiber into them, which is apparently quite difficult. “Froggy” shares a contraption to avoid tangled yarn while reusing/recycling at the same time. And “Wonder Why Gal” has given me inspiration to recall my grandmother’s lessons in crocheting and get to work again, myself!

“Nothing to hide, tell the truth“ – this is the tenor of the three key note speeches, held at the panel “Good Communication – Good Marketing“ during the Helvetas World Congress of Organic Cotton in Interlaken, Switzerland. If this were as simple as it sounds. There are thousands of brands worldwide- but only a fraction of them make their business, their textile chain transparent.

Transparency along the whole textile chain – this is something hessnatur stands for. Robert Cornelius from the swiss company Switcher and Simona Matt from the retail company Coop are also committed to this principle. They both join the panel with hessnatur’s CEO Wolf Lüdge.

Coop sources organic cotton for their collection from projects in India and Tanzania. Switcher offers transparent information about the whole production process. Every customer is able to see their production steps in the internet.

Wolf focused in his key note speech on 7 principles of sustainable marketing and brand communication. It’s important, he said, to stay on the beliefs of the brand, respect its roots and involve the customer. For example as we here do in the hessnatur corporate blog or with the Eco-Tee Design Contest. Also it’s the brand promise to ambition for innovations. Wolf mentioned our organic cotton growing project with Helvetas in Burkina Faso, where hessnatur supports – together with our customers – the meal  in the school cafeteria.

There was one statement during the discussion from Robin Cornelius I was thinking about. He said: “In the economy it’s not only about to grow, grow, grow.” It’ s much more about to give something economical a kind of sense, of spirit it’s necessary to be able to change things in the world with the work a company or brand is doing – just to give something a kind of sense. People and brand acting with the belief like this should not hide and be hidden. They need to get heard.

At the start of September, we went on our first cross-country journey since we moved here. We drove east over the Cascades, towards Idaho. We really enjoyed how the landscape changed as we entered the high desert of eastern Washington. A huge lava flow engulfed the area long ago, leaving great basalt columns crowded together along the side of the highway. The openness of the scenery was overwhelming.

Finally, after countless are we there yets, we arrived in Coeur d’Alene. We were in time for the North Idaho Fair, and enjoyed a close look at live owls and other birds of prey which had been rescued from the roadside or mishaps with barbed wire. After that, there was the traditional bunnies and goats and horses, of course. On the way out we ran into a dance group from the Coeur d’Alene tribe performing in full traditional dress, which was pretty cool.

At the farmers’ market, snuggled into the trees downtown, “backyard” farmers offered a wonderful selection of heirloom produce, organic homemade jam, herbs, breads, bird houses, and garden plants. It was just the kind of place that I want to support – local people making a living in a local market.

Armed with garden plants and local produce, we headed for home. On the way, we stopped at Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park at the beautiful Columbia River. I love Ginkgo trees, my husband and I enjoy fossils and geology. It was just a cool place. Well, actually it was pretty hot.