Author Archives: growingfoodandsustainability

The Gifts that Keep on Giving

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Last week was training week for Growing Food and Sustainability, (aka Summer of Solutions-Middleton).  During this time we learned numerous valuable skills and tidbits about how the program operates. In my opinion though, the best part of the week was Wednesday after lunch when we read The Gift Circle.

This text in a nutshell (and I highly recommend reading the whole thing), is about the gift economy and how it both increases community and decreases environmental impact.  We all really enjoyed the idea.   In the discussion that followed about what we wanted and what we had to offer each other, the ideas started flowing.  The first time we went around the circle we mostly mentioned skills we wanted to gain from the program this summer. These ranged from pest control on plants to working better with youth.   The second time we went around, we talked about what we each had to offer.  Many of us mentioned various skills we had coming into the program that were not necessarily related to working with youth or gardening.  From here we came up with a brand new aspect of the summer program: the skill share.

We decided that this summer we will hold a skill share every Saturday, which will consist of one full or part time participant teaching others a new skill.  Some of the skills that people in our team wanted to share included: playing guitar, crocheting, Zumba-ing, cooking delicious Malaysian food, and playing basketball.  Quite a wide range, and enough to make a renaissance man (or woman) out of anyone!

The other reason the skill share discussion was so great is that we were all at a point in training week where we crossed over to speaking as friends, not just as co-participants.  It was the midpoint in the week, and after getting to know each other better in the previous few days, the discussion about what we each had to offer to the skill share made visible how much potential there is within our group to grow strong, lasting friendships.

Overall it was an excellent week, and an excellent workshop.  I look forward to sharing and learning some skills with some newfound friends in the near future!

– Colin Higgins

Joining the Team

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Last week was training week at Growing Food and Sustainability, and it was a great success! I am only a part-time participant this summer, but I tried to make as much of the week as possible, and I am so glad I did.

We spent most of the week in workshops, covering a wide variety of topics that ranged from training in community organizing and gardening, to business models and social media. We also dedicated a large amount of time to building relationships with one another and developing a sense of community.

Colin, Ain, and I giving our practice workshop to the group

Our awesome team!

Training week stirred in me a sense of excitement for the upcoming months, and a strong sense that awesome things are going to happen this summer in Middleton. I am so honored to be a part of Growing Food and Sustainability, and can’t wait to start our summer program tomorrow!

Thanks!
Lennea

May in Middleton

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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 1st, 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

Middleton’s Community Greenhouse and Video Debut

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Start your seeds in the MHS greenhouse this spring!

This spring, Growing Food and Sustainability (SoS Middleton) has programmed and cleaned-out the greenhouse at the high school so that after years of disuse, it is now up and running and growing beautiful seedlings!  Our program only needs to use a fraction of the greenhouse space, so we would like to invite all community members to start garden seeds in the greenhouse this spring!

Every weekend this spring we will host weekly Community Greenhouse Hours when the greenhouse will be open and a Program Leader will be present.  This is time when anyone using the greenhouse can check on their plants, plant more seedlings, remove their seedlings, etc.  Community Greenhouse Hours will be posted on our website homepage.  For guidelines and more details, please click here.  We look forward to seeing the greenhouse teeming with life and activity!

Watch Growing Food and Sustainability’s Video Debut!

Join these lovely ladies and the rest of the Middleton team for an incredible summer!  We still have openings for full-time participant positions and stipends available (allocated based on financial need).  To apply, please click here.  Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis until May 15th.  We hope you’ll join us!

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at: GrowingFoodandSustainability@gmail.com

Gabrielle and Natalie Hinahara
Founders, Program Leaders

Gardens and Greenhouse in Action

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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 19th and 20th, 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.

Trays seeded by middle and high school students

We held another big workday on Saturday the 24th 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 🙂

Garden Workday

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!

That’s a lot of growing space!

~ Natalie and Gabrielle Hinahara, Program Leaders

Expanding Team, Expanding Solutionary Vision

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This month has truly been one of expansion!  The network of people working together to make Growing Food and Sustainability a reality is growing everyday, as is our vision for a youth-led, community-based sustainability program.  We are reaching out to our neighbors, engaging high school Ecology Club students, and exploring the idea of adding a third garden site at the Middleton Alternative Senior High (MASH).  In the process of planning our Summer Program for middle and high school youth, we are finding ways to incorporate a wide variety of sustainability topics, including composting, water conservation, reuse of resources, and people-powered transportation.  With spring right around the corner, it’s an exciting time in Wisconsin!

Expanding Team

In this early phase of our organization’s development, we are using door-to-door canvassing as a primary tool for local outreach, community feedback, and resource generation.  We set aside a few hours every weekend to walk around Middleton and engage our neighbors in a conversation about our project.  The response has been incredibly motivating!  We’ve met master gardeners, teachers, community activists, parents, and even a dietician.  We’ve compiled an email list of 149 people.  AND we’ve raised over $600 to support our work this spring!

Middleton’s Program Leaders, Gabrielle and Natalie, both served as president of the Middleton High School Ecology Clubwhen they were in high school, so it only makes sense that we would collaborate with this group of students!  The Ecology Club decided to dedicate their spring semester weekly meetings to help us design the gardens, start seeds and take care of baby plants in the greenhouse, recruit more high school participants, and plan an event at the high school to highlight our program.  What a great group of students to be working with!

Presenting to the MHS Ecology Club

We’re exploring a possible expansion of our program to a third garden site at MASH, the Middleton Alternative High School.  Since this school has more available land, we’re hoping to site our “farm-style” garden here so we can grow a wide variety of annuals in a row crop layout.  We think that this new location will be a huge asset to our program and to the students attending MASH.  It will provide easier access to our program for at-risk students and will tie-in perfectly with MASH’s upcoming transition to a project-based model of education.  Incorporating the gardens into this style of learning will keep them in use throughout the school year and will give students a hands-on opportunity to learn about sustainability and agriculture.

Expanding Solutionary Vision

We are expanding the idea of a “school garden program” to incorporate a wide variety of sustainability initiatives and opportunities for green business ventures.

We are building compost containers out of reused shipping pallets to compost all of the refuse from the garden and from all meals that we host in the garden.  We are also partnering with Bloom Bake Shop, a local bakery, to pilot a bike-powered compost service.  Starting in March, we will pick up their used coffee grounds and vegetable waste once per week, compost it at our garden site, and use the finished compost to organically fertilize the gardens.  If this project is a success this summer, we will expand our composting operation to include food waste from the school cafeterias and other local businesses.

Water conservation will be incorporated into the garden through daily water use practices (such as not watering the gardens during the middle of the day) and through the use of rain barrels.  A number of our workshop topics specifically relate to water conservation, such as how to conserve water at home and rain garden design and installation.

Growing Food and Sustainability incorporates art and creative expression through engaging projects and workshops, all of which focus on reused materials.  For example, we will teach students how to weave coasters out of old magazines and how to create beautiful mosaic frames using old CDs.  The coasters are also for sale on our website, with all proceeds supporting our program!  $12 for a set of 4.

The program’s reliance on bikes as our primary form of transportation guarantees that students will be involved with people-powered transportation on a regular basis.  We will transport all of the tools and supplies between our three garden sites by bike trailer, with students either walking or biking with us.  We will also deliver produce to the local food pantry once per week by bike trailer, and students will be invited to join us for this group bike outing.  These opportunities encourage individual use of people-powered transportation while simultaneously exposing our participants to the network of bike paths available within Middleton.

This summer we plan to pilot a raised bed home vegetable garden installation business at a local residence.  Community members who purchase this service will be provided with a custom-designed vegetable garden based on their needs, complete sourcing of materials and plants, installation, and instructions on plant care and harvesting.  We may also provide weekly maintenance for an additional fee.  The ultimate goal of this project is to train and employ local youth in work that benefits their community while simultaneously increasing local food production in Middleton.

Expanding into the Future

Last week we received three part-time participant applications!  We are looking forward to engaging these new team members in our work and to hearing their new insights and ideas for Growing Food and Sustainability.  Our goal for the summer is to involve 5 full-time participants, 5 part-time participants, and 5 high school interns.  If you are interested in joining our team, please apply online.  Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and stipends for full-time participation are available!

Inspiration Abounds in Wisconsin!

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We (Natalie and Gabrielle) just returned from a 5-day regional training in Chicago organized by Grand Aspirations and man, was it awesome!  We met and became friends with fellow Summer of Solutions program leaders from the Twin Cities, Detroit, Iowa City, Chicago, West Virginia, Hartford CT, and the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.  Our Middleton, WI program, Growing Food and Sustainability, was the only brand new program that was part of this Midwest gathering, so we had the incredible experience of receiving advice and support from many seasoned program leaders.  Thank you for sharing your stories of success, failure, and personal insight with us!

Every single training was engaging and eye-opening, so it’s almost impossible to share only a few thoughts, but here are some ideas that really stuck with me.

  • EVERYONE cares deeply about at least one of the four values that Grand Aspirations embodies: sustainability, prosperity, justice, and community.  By integrating all of these, Summer of Solutions programs like ours can involve people traditionally left out of the “environmental movement”.
  • Our current social, political, and economic system is not working for a vast number of American (and global) citizens, and their failures hit already marginalized groups the hardest.  We can choose to create new systems that strengthen communities, sustain individuals, and value our environment.
  • The transition is already happening. Cities like Detroit led the way for the expansion of American manufacturing, and they were also the first to be abandoned by our economic system.  Now, out of necessity, they are leading the way again, this time in revolutionary green economy ventures.
  • Creating the future that we want to see means making it sustainable, both environmentally and financially.  By thinking about ways to grow businesses out of

    Raised bed vegetable garden installation...this could be your yard!

    our projects, we can provide needed products, services, jobs, and job training to our communities.  In Middleton, we plan to start a raised bed vegetable garden installation business and a bike-powered composting business.  Both will train high school students and post-high school youth in green entrepreneurship, nonprofit administration, and hands-on job skills.

  • Personal (and community) transformation is dependent upon personal sustainability.  We should strive to create jobs and experiences that people will be happy and satisfied dedicating their lives to.  In other words, we have to take care of each other and ourselves.

Whew!  I know that was kind of heavy, but I do believe in taking a step back every now and then to realize that our little project here in Middleton, WI is part of something much bigger.

We arrived home with a great sense of empowerment, inspiration, and responsibility.  We have so much to do to get our program ready but there is so much possibility!

We are starting our collaboration with the Middleton High School Ecology Club and AP Environmental Science class next week.  We are also starting to bring together a team of students and community members who plan to help launch Growing Food and Sustainability in a number of ways.  If you are interested in taking a more active role in the creation and running of this program, please contact us!  We are dedicating a lot to this project and we would love to expand our team!  In addition to “adult” community members, our goal is to have 5 full-time youth (under 30) participants and 5 high school interns signed-on by June.  Please see the “Get Involved > Participate” page of our website for more details.

** If you are interested in becoming a full or part-time participant in our program this summer, please fill out this online application.  If you are interested in becoming a high school intern, we will be posting an application soon! **

Let’s rock it, Middleton!
Gabrielle

Growing Food and Sustainability-Middleton, WI

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The team in Middleton, WI is so excited to be a part of this inspiring network of youth leaders!

Our Program

We are designing and running a sustainability and environmental education program primarily for middle and high school youth that focuses on gardening and food production but also incorporates art, people-powered transportation, and multi-age relationship building through teaching and mentorships.  The program’s home base will be the garden and greenhouse, located on public school land in central Middleton, where we will hold the majority of the workshops and host open garden work hours.  However, we will also expand our work into the greater Middleton community.  Some of our ideas include running a kids activity table and possibly selling some of our produce at the Downtown Middleton Farmers’ Market, taking group bike trips to the nearby Bock Community Garden, and delivering (by bike trailer) a percentage of the produce we grow to the Middleton Outreach Ministry’s food pantry.

Workshops will incorporate a variety of sustainability topics and will often use the garden as a hands-on classroom.  Students will learn basic gardening skills such as bed construction, seed starting in the greenhouse, composting, transplanting, caring for plants, maintaining the garden, harvesting, washing, and distributing produce.  We will also discuss and put into practice topics such as nutrition, the nutrient cycle, alternative transportation, water conservation, energy efficiency, and we will host several cooking classes at the nearby Willy Street Co-op.  All of this will help connect the garden to the larger issues of sustainability, health, and justice.  Personal expression through art and writing will be a part of every workshop as well.  We will incorporate garden-fresh snacks as often as possible, and participating students will have the opportunity to bring fresh produce home to their families on a regular basis.

During open garden work hours, students will be able to spend additional time at the garden based on their level of interest.  The garden will be a safe, supervised space, where parents can feel comfortable leaving their kids and where kids will know they can interact with a supportive adult.

Gabrielle Hinahara

Gabrielle has extensive farming and gardening experience and has also worked with youth.  In college, she was involved with F.H. King Students for Sustainable Agriculture, where she helped to lead educational workshops for the student body in addition to volunteering in the garden.  In the summer of 2010, she worked as the head counselor at the Frost Valley YMCA Farm Camp in New York, where she helped run garden-based outdoor education classes, counseled middle school-aged youth, and advised and evaluated the counseling staff.  In the fall of 2010, she worked as an intern at Growing Power, an urban farm in Milwaukee, WI, where she learned about intensive growing systems such as vermiculture and aquaponics.  She recently completed a full-season apprentice at Simple Gifts Farm in Amherst, MA, which runs a 300-member CSA and also sells at the local farmers market.  This is where she gained most of her agricultural knowledge, including learning how to plan greenhouse and field planting schedules and how to grow and harvest almost every type of produce, from strawberries to squash to lettuce. 

Natalie Hinahara

Natalie has significant experience organizing groups of peers and also in effectively communicating and partnering with adults.  She was the student representative on the City of Middleton Sustainability Committee both her junior and senior year of high school and was president of the high school Ecology Club during her senior year.  She also has experience working with youth in a garden setting, since she volunteered in Middleton’s Bock Children’s Garden in the summer of 2010.  In college, she is currently a member of the UW-Madison chapter of Slow Food and is an intern in WISPIRG’s anti-big ag campaign, where she is learning community organizing skills.  She is also majoring in art, so her talent in this area will contribute to the arts portion of our program.

Right now, we are working on securing land for garden space at both Middleton High School and Kromrey Middle School.  We are excited to know how much land we will have so that we can design the gardens!

If you are interested in keeping updated on our progress, please join our facebook group!