Summer At The Garden: New Projects

On Tuesday we began some of the new projects from Jon Rosales and GardenShare, as well as continuing several of our old, ongoing projects. At a morning GardenShare meeting, we discussed their upcoming Food Day Youth Summit, to be held October 16, 2013 at SUNY Potsdam. After discussing the origins of the event and some of its history, we started planning aspects of the upcoming event. This year's Food Day Youth Summit will include workshops that will provide high school groups interested in such things with the resources to plan, execute and support projects including;

Planning, assembling and maintaining a school garden
Composting
Waste reduction
Integrating gardening in to school life in the cafeteria and classroom
A vending machine health campaign
Food tastings of healthy and local goods
Taking food surveys for future reference
An Oxfam hunger banquet
and starting a group of interested students to support and maintain these projects

Sheila and I, as well as the GardenShare staff and interns, will be assembling Tool Kits, packets of helpful information to guide teachers and students to succesful completion of these projects at their schools, which they can take away from the Summit. I will be assembling a packet on composting, and Sheila will be tackling the creation of a group to carry out projects.

Following the meeting, we did pulled some more of those unrelenting weeds, then went on a shopping trip for the ESL. We traveled to the Wood Chop Shop, a local small business (with great service!) carrying heavy duty power tools and machinery, to purchase a new line trimmer, something the ESL has not had but could really use. We bought a used Stihl FS 56 C, along with a tall grass blade provided courtesy of the store owner. Next we went to Rex Hardware to buy mortar to repair a stone sculpture, part of a senior art project called 'Opportunities' done by a former SLU student, which blew down and fell apart in a storm last year. Lastly, we bough hinges to build a new door for the Once & Future Forest shed on the ESL property.

With the new trimmer and the blade, we cut a trail through the tall grass out to the Opportunities sculpture. Next up is a trail through field, down to the bridge over Tracy Brook and around the Protest Tree, another senior art project from a SLU student.

On Wednesday, we began weeding out the garlic bed and the roof garden, where we hope to plant some herbs.