LETS GO Chicago members have been quite busy throughout the late winter and early spring and we are excited to tell you why. As Chicago thaws, the Rogers Park solutionaries are revving up for their fourth season of gardening, community building, youth empowerment and more. We have been preparing for our spring garden since early March by planting seedlings in our new greenhouse in West Rogers Park. Through a new partnership with the Westwood Manor Nursing Home, we are breathing life into the 18 by 32 foot space with the help of nursing home residents. The greenhouse is allowing us to select a wider range of crop varieties while providing a valuable learning experience for all involved.

The greenhouse at Westwood Manor

Come mid-May, we will also be adding a community garden to this open space on the nursing home grounds:

Future site of a community garden

As a year round program, we are also excited to start our spring Children’s Garden Classes on May 6^th. Though it’s still a few weeks away, we have had plenty of curious visitors come through asking to visit our lovely hens in the side yard of the Koinonia House. To our housemates’ delight (our garden is in the front yard of an intentional housing community where some of us live), the chore of “chicken duty” now requires a willingness to give spontaneous farm tours to neighbors passing by.  The hens have also begun laying eggs again as the days grow longer and they acclimate to the increase in light.

One of our long-time youth gardeners visits with the chickens

Nine fresh eggs from the LETS GO chickens!

Spring is also the time when we get to experience the joy of watching our honeybees emerge from their hive where they’ve been huddling together all winter long waiting for spring.  Sadly, only one of the two colonies on top of United Church of Rogers Park survived this winter, but we have new colonies on the way to replace the loss.

Molly is also taking a woodworking class at Loyola Park Field House to learn how to build hive boxes for what we anticipate will be a third colony.  If all goes well, we should have some honey to share with the community in late-May to early-June.

Bees bringing pollen back to the hive in early-April 2013

SAVE THE DATE: Our annual Summer of Solutions program will run June 17^th-August 16^th. Applications are open through Sunday, April 14^th.

For more information on our programs, please visit http://www.letsgochicago.org. You may also contact us at anytime at team@letsgochicago.org, Like us on Facebook , or Follow us on Twitter. We look forward to sharing more soon. Happy Spring!