More infants are exclusively consuming breast milk immediately after being born in California hospitals than before, according to a new report from the California Women, Infants, Children Association and the UC Davis Human Lactation Center.
Author: Lorena Anderson
Like many men, Cesar Vera got his ideas about being a father from watching his own dad, who worked 12 hours a day for little money, but managed to provide for a family that lived most of the year in migrant farm camps in the Central Valley. “I played with my kids more than my dad ever had time to play with us,” Vera said. “I thought I was father of the year.”
Even in California’s fertile Central Valley – where 25 percent of the nation’s produce is grown – many people go without fresh fruit or vegetables — because they can’t afford them or don’t have a story nearby that sells them.
Though Geoff and Brei Tobin’s lives became more complicated when their daughter Tessa developed type 1 diabetes, new software now in development promises to lighten some of the load for them and millions of others.
Small organic farms cropping up all over California are helping residents get back to their roots — and also their leafy greens and vitamins. The first two community-supported agriculture ventures began on the East Coast in 1986, and since then, the number of community-supported farms across the country has grown exponentially as word of mouth travels.
When Charles Garcia looks at a garden, he doesn’t see plants. He sees medicine, heritage, art and magic. A curandero, Garcia practices traditional folk healing – curanderismo – the way his mother, grandmother and grandfather did. “It’s a combination of what the Spanish padres, the ranchers and the natives practiced,” Garcia said. “That was the beginning of California curanderismo.” Curanderismo is still widely used in Mexico, Central and South America, and is making a comeback here in California and across the Southwest, especially as immigrant populations grow.