New Voices: Introducing William Widmaier

Sustainable Frederick continues to evolve. Hopefully you have seen our wild Facebook success -- we are still working out the best way to use it, but we've already found the interaction we had been missing. Now I have the pleasure of introducing SF's first new writer!

William has an undergraduate degree in History & Journalism, and is now studying Environmental Biology. He has already been published in the Gazette here and here. As you might imagine, I am delighted that William brings such important and relevant skills and interests to the Sustainable Frederick blog.

Getting to the point, here is William Widmaier:

I rarely remember my first conversations with people, but I always remember meeting them.

And so, I would like to introduce myself.

My name is William Widmaier and I am going to help contribute to Sustainable Frederick, adding a new voice, opinion, and state of mind to an already well seasoned blog.

I’m from New York, but now I live in Frederick after graduating from Hood College last January. I don’t want to bore anyone with an autobiography so I’ll keep it short.

Growing up, I learned about growing food. My dad’s sizeable vegetable garden in Brooklyn taught me that some of the best things to eat are grown in your own backyard. Tomato, cucumber, and onion salad tastes that much better when you can say you picked the ingredients twenty minutes ago in a raised bed not twenty feet from the back door. Summer becomes the freshest tasting season you know.

Tomato season was a particular favorite, but as I grew older, my palate did as well. Now I treasure the chard and the arugula that sprout from the rich soil, the onions and the radishes just as much as the first cherry tomatoes off the vine.

Composting helps. Heaps of black gold in our little backyard have grown and grown over the years, and the parts of the yard that have grass are getting smaller and smaller.

But here in Frederick I rent a room in someone else’s house. I cannot simply change the landscape as I see fit.

Growing food is sustainable correct? Is it important for me to understand where the seeds are coming from, or how much water the plants may need? Does gardening save me more than buying cucumbers at the store? Is there some calculator that can tell me how much I am reducing my carbon footprint?

I will remember our first conversation, and how we met.