Hi all,

This is Leo from Portland, here to tell you about the marathon organizing month we’ve just had. May has been a crazy whirlwind of emotion/progress and it doesn’t look to be letting up soon!

First off, we have confirmed Memorandums of Understanding with all of our community partners! Not only will they be receiving the data that we collect about community interests this summer, but they will also work directly with our participants to refine and upgrade their engagement strategies! As we say, an involved community is a strong community, and as organizers, it is part of our duty to get people involved in the spaces in which they live. What could be more elementary?

May has also been a crazy recruiting month for us. We have not only had rolling admissions from the Grand Aspirations national admissions process, but we in Portland have started another round of recruiting in our public universities in high schools. I personally spoke to over 60 college students about two weeks ago, and many are eager to create the change they want to see in the world!

All in all, it’s been a crazy month for us in Portland. Just when we could use it to slow down, it speeds right back up again. It’s all for the better though… we’ll have a dynamite Summer of Solutions this year!

PS. Congrats to all the programs that have recently kicked off, and any that are kicking off in the near future!

Here in Minneapolis we are making a movable container garden in my yard (since we are renters!)  Early this spring we joined Gardening Matters Hubs program, which provided us with plenty of seeds, and already started seedlings.  We have used found Kiwi shipping containers as movable raised beds, that our peppers and tomatoes are happily sprouting in.    

We have also planted beets, onions, cucumbers, and broccoli in found dresser drawers (untreated and unpainted).  But rabbits and squirrels started eating the seeds so we stapled chicken wire around the sides that that seemed to help keep them out.   

Across the yard is a Scarlet Runner Heirloom Bean Pole!!  They seem to be doing pretty well and are starting to climb the string up to the top of the pole/sapling.  Nestled at the top of the sapling is something called a river tooth, which according to David James Duncan, are remains of old-growth trees that fall into Northwestern rivers and are sculpted by time and water; you can check out his book called “River Teeth: Stories and Writings” if you want to read more! 

Libby

We’ve been busy getting our hands dirty in the Pioneer Valley, but I cleaned up enough for Sunday supper to write a blog post without soiling the computer.  

After a dry March and April, those April showers finally showed up in May.  That means the past two weeks have seen a lot of growth in our various growing spots in Franklin County.  The seeds that would barely germinate are now growing too quick for us to keep up with.  

But it’s worthwhile to take some time out from the weeding and transplanting and word-spreading to do a round up:

-The Summer Workshop Series is taking shape.  Advisory Groups in Turners Falls have provided feedback, totaling about 26 workshops that the Brick House will attempt to put on this summer.  SoS-ers will be in volunteer roles, facilitating some courses and also doing outreach and logistics.  The free workshops will range from wilderness skills to English conversation practice to Kids Gardening.  

-Several rows are planted at Harvest Moon Farm and more are in the works.  Our first SoS workday on Wednesday May 30 had six of us out transplanting tomatoes, spreading mulch, weeding and harvesting scapes!

-We have gotten a lot of great farm donations that will keep us busy filling in the rows.  Plants from Gwen’s work, transplants from Harvest Farm of Whatley, and seeds on the way soon from High Mowing and America the Beautiful. Always plenty of mulch from the farm too!

-We took first place in the Youth Biz Expo Biz Idea contest with our Garlic Scape Pesto concept!  We are now rushing to get ready to go into production, because the scapes are coming in early this year. Once we get a batch out, we now have many local contacts interested in purchasing.  In the meantime, we have very stinky breath from snacking on scapes.

-Program members have also made it out to Laughing Dog Farm in Gill and Warner Farm in Sunderland to diversify our agricultural experiences.  Replete with goats and veggies, Laughing Dog is always a hit, and Warner Farm certainly gave us a lesson in tomato suckering. 

And all this even before the program starts?  There’s no slowing down from here and we’re excited to kick off in one week with all our participants!

Keep up with our adventures this summer at http://pioneervalleysolutions.wordpress.com/.

.

UPDATE: As of 12:14PM today, we have raised a total of $4,079 to go toward building Chicago’s first yard sharing network! Thank you to everyone who helped us meet our goal! We cannot explain how excited we are to make this network happen and there is no way we could have done it without your support!

The fundraising window is still open through Friday at 10:42 AM CDT. All donations above the $4,000 mark will go toward making our gardens even more fun, inclusive, and community centered!  See our update about this on our Kickstarter page here. The original post continues below. Continue reading →

Check out this post from Summer of Solutions Hartford!

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 ❤

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!