Tag Archives: Middleton

Ideas All Around

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Greetings to you all out there in blogging land!  I hope that all is going well for you this February.  In Middleton, things have been going extremely well!

January 17th through February 8th has been a glorious rush of ideas and planning for us.  This all began when we arrived at the United Church of Rogers Park in Chicago.  This was the location of one of Grand Aspiration’s January Gatherings this year, where all the leaders of programs throughout the Midwest (and this year from Hartford, CT, too) gathered to learn, teach, and enjoy each other’s company.  Though I have been involved in Growing Food and Sustainability for over a year, this was my first January Gathering and it was quite an experience.  The week contained trainings on everything from the abstract early in the week (the green economy, and the larger systems organizing our world) to the concrete towards the end of the week (such as the best way to message and frame the work that we are doing). I also helped to facilitate a community organizing training, which was a relatively new and informative experience for me, as I had never facilitated a training for such a large group of people before.  Towards the end of the week, we had some time to get together as a team and begin to create plans and share our ideas for our summer, and everything that goes into making it possible.  It was a process that was slightly overwhelming, but in the end yielded many great ideas and much excitement for the semester ahead.

1Facilitating the Community Organizing Training Continue reading →

The Badger Bioneer Spirit

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The past month was full of holiday spirit and generosity, but the highlight for Growing Food and Sustainability was receiving a Metcalfe’s School Garden Leader Award at the Badger Bioneers Conference!   The award included a gift of $1,000 for the organization and also allowed program leaders Gabrielle and Natalie to attend the two-day conference free of charge.

1 Natalie and Gabrielle with their check! The other winners of the award were Mary Michaud of Van Hise Elementary in Madison and Cheryl Stout of Oregon Middle School.

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Lace up your trainers…January Gatherings are fast approaching!

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Grand Aspirations’ January Gatherings are 5-days of intensive training to give program leaders the tools to run successful programs in their communities.  This year, we are hosting three January Gatherings in program locations across the country!

  • Washington, D.C. from December 28th-January 1st
  • Hapeville, Georgia from January 9th-13th
  • Chicago, Illinois from January 17th-21st

January Gatherings are an extremely important and effective part of the leadership development training that Grand Aspirations provides to program leaders.  In addition to covering topics from anti-oppression to project development, participants will also have the opportunity to learn from (and become friends with!) the other amazing program leaders running projects in other locations.  This is really the grand kick-off to our new year of projects, and we couldn’t be more excited!

Curious what past program leaders have said about January Gatherings?  Check-out last year’s blog post from the Middleton Summer of Solutions team as they reflected on their experience.

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SoS Middleton: Making Art and Winning Awards

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Thank you to everyone who made Growing Food and Sustainability’s first year a success! Please take a look below to see all that Summer of Solutions-Middleton accomplished.

Program Mission:
We started GFS to engage youth in hands-on environmental education through food production, cooking, art, biking, and multi-age relationship building. We ran a summer garden camp, organized community workdays, piloted a bike-powered compost service, and delivered produce donations to those in need.

Accomplishments:

  • 27 students ages 4-17 involved in the summer garden camp
  • 108 hours of garden summer camp taught within 9 weeks
  • 1,260 pounds of produce grown and harvested
  • 1,220 pounds diverted from the waste stream through our bike-powered compost pick-up service
  • 730 pounds of produce donated to the Middleton Outreach Ministry Food Pantry
  • 229 pounds of produce donated to the Middleton Senior Center

Since our Garden Summer Camp finished-up in August, we have been working with the Ecology Clubs at Middleton High School and the Clark Street Community School to keep students involved in garden and sustainability education. These groups helped us prepare the garden and youth farm for the winter, learned how to construct a light table to grow plants indoors year-round, and participated in conversation about our food system.

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Coming Together Over Food

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Cross-posted from Growing Food and Sustainability

GFS kicked off this fall with two bountiful, joyful events!  On October 15th we worked with the MHS Ecology Club to put on the 8th annual Organic Dinner.  It was really exciting because this was the first year the meal included produce that was grown in the school gardens.  As has become tradition, The Roman Candle Pizzeria catered the main course, which was a pasta dish containing our veggies, Clasen’s, a local bakery, provided bread sticks, and the Chocolate Shoppe donated ice cream.

In order to have enough fresh veggies in the middle of October, a few weeks ahead of time we harvested a bunch of kale, onions, peppers, and eggplant and blanched and froze them so we could have fresh veggies, in the pasta dish.  We also harvested kale the day of the event for a fresh kale salad.  Between the dinner and the silent auction, the event raised $1,400 which will be split between the Ecology Club, the school’s Envirothon team, our program Growing Food and Sustainability, and the Friends of Pheasant Branch, the stewards of our local nature preserve.

It was a really great experience to work with both of the high school Ecology Clubs on the Organic Dinner.  There was a lot of fun to be had harvesting the veggies and I think the experience of creating a delicious, sustainable meal to serve to their teachers, friends and family was really rewarding.

MHS Ecology Club students preparing kale and eggplant

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Meet Middleton’s Fall Interns!

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Cross-posted from Growing Food and Sustainability

Even though the summer is over, here at Summer of Solutions-Middleton we are continuing to involve students in our garden project. We are working with the Ecology Clubs at both Middleton High School and the Clark Street Community School, providing students with projects to fulfill their service-learning hours, and outreaching to teachers to help them to see our gardens as teaching spaces. Much of this has been possible because of the help of our two fall interns, Caila and Sara.

Caila Fredrick

Hey! I’m Caila Fredrick, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. First and foremost, you should know that I love to eat. You could say this motivates most of what I do, from packing my backpack with 10% books and 90% snacks, to hopping on board with Gabrielle and Natalie as they bring high school students out of the desk chair and into a classroom filled with dirt, plants, worms, and good old-fashioned working with your hands.

My love for being outside and Mama Earth began when I was a brace-faced ten year old canoeing through the Northwoods of Wisconsin with Camp Manito-wish YMCA. I’ve been goofing around in the woods ever since, and now I strive to bring that love of nature into my kitchen…and into my belly. I believe in knowing where your food comes from, and in making it taste good. More importantly, I believe in sharing this passion, something I get to do with Growing Food and Sustainability. I especially look forward to bringing the philosophies of experiential education, which have been so powerful for me through work at Camp Manito-wish and through Adventure Learning Programs in Madison, into my time with the high school students in Middleton. Continue reading →

Celebrating a Bounty of Food, Friends, and Fun

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Cross-posted from Growing Food and Sustainability

Yesterday was our biggest event of the summer, our Harvest Festival! We invited friends, family, neighbors, and community members to join us in a celebration of Growing Food and Sustainability’s first summer. Much has happened since Natalie and I first dreamed-up this program last October. A few highlights include…

  • Creating a 5,000 square foot Youth Farm where we have harvested 923 pounds of produce to date
  • Running a 9-week summer program for 26 students from 4-16 years old
  • Donating (and delivering with our bike trailer) 373 pounds of produce to the Middleton Outreach Ministry Food Pantry and 145 pounds to the Middleton Senior Center
  • Composting 887 pounds of food waste from Bloom Bake Shop and Roman Candle Pizzeria
  • Building a team of youth leaders to run our program. Ain and Lauren, our full-time participants, we simply couldn’t have done any of this without you! And to all of our committed part-time participants (Abby, Alyson, Asha, Colin, Katie, Lennea, Liz, Matthew, Morgan, Neil, and Teague), you kept our program rolling and contributed your talents and energy exactly when we needed them!

And now about that Harvest Festival…

Our wonderful volunteers made sure that everything ran smoothly and that everyone had fun! There were games, activities, music, and food for all to enjoy!

Farm Stand and Bake Sale at the Harvest Festival

Lauren putting our bike trailer to another use…

Bike-powered Hay Rides!

Our long-time friend and artist, Cathi, came all of the way from Chicago to run a ceramic plate-making activity! It was a hug hit with kids and adults of all ages.

Making ceramic plates!

Some of the kids took charge over the activities. Here, 6-year-old Elizabeth is running the face painting table.

Family face-painting

Seeing the faces of so many friends (old and new) at the Harvest Festival made me feel so supported in this work. Grandparents, parents, and family friends who have watched me and Natalie grow-up were there to cheer us on. I also realized how many new connections GFS has made within the community and how many new people I can now call friends. It felt incredible to know that the GFS team created this beautiful community in just one summer, and that these friendships and connections will continue to grow into the future.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to making our Harvest Festival such a success. We had so much fun celebrating with you and your generosity helped us to raise over $500 to send a group of our youth leaders to the Summer of Solutions National Gathering in Connecticut next week. THANK YOU!

~ Gabrielle, Program Leader

You can’t beet this! (A beet-filled week at GFS)

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Cross-posted from Growing Food and Sustainability

We had a new crop of young ones in our program last week and it was a blast! We painted signs in preparation for our Harvest Festival and harvested 24 pounds of beets!

4-year-old Finn, with a beet as big as his head!

Along with the excitement of new program students, we also had to say goodbye to the triplets: Ancha, Rama, and Modu. We are lucky to have had this family as a part of our program for our first summer. Their high energy and enthusiasm never wavered, whether they were harvesting and eating raw kale leaves, painting signs to decorate the garden, or engrossed in a Magic School Bus book.

Their mom, Viki, told us that she feels that they will apply all that they’ve learned through the program in school, at home, and in life. It is a wonderful feeling for all of us to have formed such a strong relationship with a family that will continue to be involved and support us in coming years.

With all the beautiful, ruby-colored beets laying around, I was inspired to paint portraits of the triplets using beet juice as a natural dye.

Ancha enjoying her kale. The beet juice is still wet and bright pink.

Rama taking in the garden. The beet paint is half dry.

Modu showing off his cherry tomato. The paint is dry and golden brown.

We sure will miss the laughter, shouts, and energy they brought to the program, and we’re already looking forward to seeing them again next summer.

Of course, I can’t end this blog post without a reminder for our Harvest Festival, this Saturday the 11th in Fireman’s Park from 4-7pm. I looked at the forecast and it is supposed to be sunny all day with a high temperature of 82 degrees. Should be fantastic! Come and join us for carnival games, live music, and purchase fresh produce, kale pesto, and baked goods at our market stand.

Hope to see you then!

Natalie

The Buzz in Middleton

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Cross-posted from Growing Food and Sustainability

This week Growing Food and Sustainability was fortunate enough to have Heather Swan give a talk on beekeeping during one of our training sessions. Heather informed us about behaviors and beekeeping practices as well as bee’s importance in agriculture as pollinators. She also gave insightful anecdotes about her own personal experience working with bees. When she was done we sampled some honey, such as the light and highly prized tupelo honey to the rich and molasses-like buckwheat honey.

Heather taught us many fun facts about honey bees:

-A healthy colony may contain as many as 60,000 worker bees.
-2,000,000 flowers must be visited to create a pound of honey.
-During the winter, bees will form a cluster in the center of the hive and vibrate to create heat. The center of the cluster may reach up to 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
-The military has used bees to locate explosives and illegal drugs because they have an extremely sensitive sense of smell.
-When bees are “swarming” in search of a new hive, they are in their least aggressive state.

Back in the garden:

We harvested our first cabbages and radishes. Plenty of rain and few weeds meant slightly less work in the garden itself. We have also been making kale pesto and screen printing T-shirts in preparation for our Harvest Festival on Saturday, August 11th.

A personal note:

I will be leaving Middleton this weekend and as such will not be continuing to work with GFS this summer. It was a pleasure to meet all of the hardworking participants with whom I grew, delivered, preserved, ate, composted and appreciated vegetables. This summer I got closer to my food, literally, thanks to GFS.

Sustain your Growing,

-Matthew

Old Friends and New Connections

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This week at Growing Food and Sustainability was a blast!

The week started out with an enjoyable Downtown Middleton Farmers’ Market. There were more people than the previous week, due to the more moderate and pleasant weather. This was great because our stand had many new children and families stopping by to participate in our kids’ activity. This week the topic was waste disposal. They had to match up different types of household waste, like plastic baggies or apple cores, with composting, recycling, garbage, or hazardous waste. The kids really enjoyed it, and some of the parents learned something new too!

Farmers’ Market Kids’ Activity Table

The Farmers’ Market was also especially fun this week because there was a new produce stand! This new stand, called “The First Acre”, is run by a couple mutual friends of Growing Food and Sustainability, who are fresh out of college. It was great to see old friends at the market, as well as to see some fresh and young faces. Overall, it was my favorite Farmers’ Market of the year! Now our mission is to make more consumers aware of the market to help support these hard-working farmers.

The First Acre Farm Stand

The other part of the week that really stood out to me was an activity that we did with our middle and high school aged participants on Wednesday. We used chalk to trace out the energy system, starting with the sun. It was especially illustrative because the youth participants could literally see the closed loops with systems like composting, and the literal dead ends with the fossil fuel system. The discussion surrounding this activity was quite deep, though a bit heavy, and it seemed as though all the participants were engaged and learned something.

Energy mapping with chalk

This activity had an unexpected result for me. I really enjoy making flow diagrams like this (which I knew already), but I learned that they are an extremely good way to convey information to others, and they’re great discussion starters. I also learned that I enjoy teaching about systems very much. These are both things that I think I will find useful in my future, since I plan to become a high school teacher.

Overall this week was excellent, and I look forward to the upcoming weeks of Farmers’ Markets and lessons. I also enjoyed the unexpected benefit of learning something new about myself from the activity!

Thanks,
Colin