As we always seem to say, a lot has happened with SoS Middleton since our last blog entry!

Last week, Growing Food and Sustainability was awarded our very first grant, and then two more within the week!  We were one of 20 award recipients (out of over 800 applicants!) to receive Jamba Juice’s “It’s all about the fruits and veggies” grant which includes garden tools and $150 to spend on soil amendments and seeds.  Today we used some of it to buy more seed potatoes!  We were also awarded the Midwest Garden Grant, which will provide our program with $750 worth of garden equipment.  Finally, we were particularly excited to receive a Community Reinvestment Fund Grant from our local Willy Street Co-op.  This grant will fund the entire bike portion of our program including a bike and heavy-duty bike trailer, allowing us to haul everything we need for the program (compost, produce, even a lawn mower!) by bike!  My quads are already feeling the burn…

Our team is getting the word out to the community in many ways.  On May 1^st, we started our weekly Kids Activity Table at the Downtown Middleton Farmers’ Market.  Our goal is to engage kids with fun, hands-on activities, and to talk to community members about our program while at the same time encouraging increased attendance at this somewhat new and small market.  So far, our activities included potting-up tomato plants and playing a seedling guessing game.  We’ve heard from parents that we already have a few dedicated kids who are watering their tomato plants everyday and eagerly awaiting the next market activity!

One of our program leaders, Gabrielle, was recently interviewed on a local radio show!  She got a chance to talk about the goals of Growing Food and Sustainability and what inspired her and her sister, Natalie, to start the organization.  Take a listen here!

As June approaches, we are finalizing our team (stay tuned for team bios, we have a fantastic group!) and preparing for training week and our summer program.  As I write this, the weather is sunny and around 70 and I know that the tomato and pepper plants we are planting on Saturday’s workday are going to be very happy!

- Gabrielle

El Jardîn de Zion St has lay dormant for months, through a Halloween snowstorm and an unseasonably warm winter. Everything but kale and a few hardy greens have long since flowered and been folded into beds for compost.

But this spring the garden is full of life again as volunteers and neighbors prepare it for a productive summer.

On a rainy Friday evening in March, our program leader team met with some neighbors at the Park Street Library branch to plan for the new season. Then on April 7^th we had our first community workday. We cleaned the lots, mowed the grass, and helped neighbors plant in their raised beds (seeds courtesy of John Scheeper’s Kitchen Garden Seeds and the Perennial Harmony Garden Shop!)

Last summer, we had a waiting list for raised beds until August, so this spring we decided to focus on expanding el jardín de Zion St to accommodate as many neighbors as possible. On April 21^st we participated in Global Youth in Service Day and hosted Hartford Boy Scouts and Public Allies in our garden. Together we built 35 raised beds and got started filling them with soil (courtesy of Flamig Farm!)

The next day was Earth Day, and we celebrated with Public Allies and more volunteers by hosting another workday at the garden to build the next 25 raised beds- which would bring us to our goal of 60 new beds- or doubling the growing capacity of the garden. Despite fears that we would be rained out, we finished 23 before the rain got bad. We would have kept going, but we ran out of screws! (My dad finished the last 2 in our garage at home).

Now both lots are full to the brim with beds. Our next step is to line and fill them all with healthy organic soil!

Join us for our next workday on May 12^th 10-2 to shovel shovel shovel and get those boxes ready for planting! We can’t wait to see them full of life this summer <3

Performers at our community fundraiser.

Build It Up just hosted our first big community fundraiser on Saturday April 21st.  We were at the Next Door at the Acoustic Coffeehouse in downtown Johnson City.  The event had a kids fair, silent art auction and almost 12 hours of great live music!  It was a rainy, cold day and we were a little disappointed with the turnout.  Despite the fact that we did not raise as much money as we’d hoped, a few very cool connections were made and we hope some productive partnerships can be formed in the near future.  One of our performers was so excited that Build It Up is promoting local food and urban gardening in East Tennessee that he offered up some land for us to build a community garden on!  Community events–even if they don’t pull in oodles of money–are still great for meeting like minded people.  Building a vibrant, sustainable local food system is going to take many strong community partnerships and if we are not out there making noise and having fun, then those connections might be missed.

Lexy putting compost on a raised bed.

At our community gardens, we have had some very productive work days.  Rachel and Stephanie are organizing the work at the new garden at Shakti, a local community center for women in Johnson City.  Lexy has spearheaded the efforts at the community garden on the campus of ETSU.  Almost all of the plots at the ETSU garden have been claimed by students and faculty and we are hoping to involve these gardeners in a summer of learning and fun.  Build It Up is getting about 250 square feet of space for growing, and combined with the space at Shakti, we hope to have plenty of produce to feed ourselves, provide for our workshops, and distribute some to local soup kitchens.  The weather has become quite chilly and wet (not unusual for April) but we are hoping the sunshine will soon return.  Planting will get underway in early May, once all chance of frost has passed.

If you like what you’ve just read, then friend us on facebook (www.facebook.com/BuildItUpETN) and let us know you want to get involved!

Grand Aspirations is launching a new series of webinars designed to help you build your skills as an organizer. From fundraising to social movement strategy, join in to learn about the diversity of skills you can use to organize your community more effectively. You can read full descriptions of the webinars and register at www.grandaspirations.org/webinars.

Joshua Kahn Russell will help you learn how to build powerful movements that are bigger than the sum of their parts. Timothy DenHerder-Thomas will walk you through the steps to building a successful sustainable business that also serves your community. Zach Wahls will give a crash course in public speaking 101 and then share some ways to avoid common rhetorical traps that environmentalists fall into. (If you want to check out his public speaking chops, look up his David Letterman appearance earlier this week.) Rachel Aitkens will walk you through the basics of effective fundraising from individuals and help you get volunteers fired up about fundraising. Zo Tobi will help you bring ease, clarity, grace, and focus to your work and your life as a whole.

Each webinar costs $25, with $5 discounts for Grand Aspirations members and for students, seniors, and under- and unemployed people. Please sign up and tell your friends! Webinars are an exciting new way for Grand Aspirations to connect you with powerful skills and generate valuable resources for the organization’s work.

The Pioneer Valley Summer of Solutions in Northern Massachusetts is growing into our second summer! Check out this awesome video of program leader Martha Pskowski breaking down what the program is all about:

Now that you’re all fired up about community education and farming in Turners Falls and Greenfield, MA, apply to join our program before April 12.

If you aren’t interested in joining our program, but you want to get involved, look up our ‘Field to ‘Field bike ride fundraiser from Springfield to Greenfield! You can sponsor a rider or join us for the ride. We’d love to see you there!

It feels great to finally have our hands in the dirt!  We have had a busy month in Middleton beginning work in the high school greenhouse and garden site.  On the 19^th and 20^th, we kicked it off with our first greenhouse workdays which included program leaders, community members, college-age participants, students from the high school Ecology Club, and a very enthusiastic group of middle school students.  Mark Voss, a local farmer and teacher, led a soil mixing workshop, followed by seeding trays and trays of tomatoes, onions, kale, broccoli, peppers, cabbage, and other veggies.

We held another big workday on Saturday the 24^th with our college age participant team, this time out in the garden.  Being the food lovers that we are, we of course kicked it off with a potluck at noon, and then worked until four, repairing the raised beds, cleaning up the old composting area, pruning the espaliered pear and apple trees, raking leaves, and clearing out the old plant debris from previous years (there was two-year-old kale still in the beds!).  We also built new compost bins from reused shipping pallets, which is just in time because we have begun our compost pick-up service for Bloom Bakery.  We diverted 20 pounds of waste from local landfills this first week!  As you can see we had a lot on our plate, but we got it done and the garden is looking great!  We have our amazing volunteers to thank for that

On top of the beautiful seedlings that are now sprouting up in the greenhouse, our work is really paying off!  Community members and students that live nearby have been eagerly stopping by to check out the progress.  A very curious eight-year-old stopped by our workday and asked for a complete run-down of all of the produce we will be planting this spring, and other neighbors have offered to pitch in a helping hand and even serve as nighttime security for the garden.  Its great to feel the surrounding community really embracing the garden and excited for the summer program that is fast approaching!

Our next big step is the somewhat intimidating job of rototilling over 4,000 square feet of bed space at our new garden site at the Middleton Alternative Senior High.  Wish us luck and endurance!