 Happy New Year!! 2011 was quite the year for us here at The Growing Project! We have a number of accomplishments to be proud of thanks to our tireless volunteers, community leaders and our dedicated sponsors! Here's a recap of what you may or may not have missed! The Glean Team project had another successful year. Through our gleaning efforts, TGP was able to contribute over 3800 pounds of food to theFood Bank of Larimer County and directly to families in need. Earlier this fall, TGP volunteers also picked and gleaned at the Grant Family Farms 'Harvestival.' Those efforts resulted in nearly 50,000 lbs of potatoes being given directly to the Food Banks throughout northern Colorado. In 2011 we also introduced another new pilot program, Urban Food Outreach, which brought five new 'Giving Gardens' to the Fort Collins community. These gardens are hosted by homeowners who pledge to donate at least 50% of produce to needy members of our community. TGP was able to provide gardening expertise, plant starts, seeds, tools, and many volunteer hours to ensure these gardens were successful. We have already received a number of applications for new gardens for 2012and are looking forward to expanding the Urban Food Outreach program! We would like to give a special "Thank you" to our man on the ground, Chad Shavor. His dedication to the design and implementation of the five 'Giving Gardens' this year was paramount to the success of the program. 2011 marks Chad's third year of dedication to TGP's success. This year, in addition to running the Urban Food Outreach program, Chad continued his work with The Remington House to ensure that our Garden Time program continued to make a difference with at-risk youth. The youth participating in Garden Time were again eager to learn everything they could about gardening! The youth enjoyed giving their extra produce to needy community members as much as they enjoyed eating the veggies they helped to raise. Thank you, Chad Shavor, for your dedication, your time, and your huge heart! You are an inspiration to all of us, and we look forward to all of the greatness to come in 2012! We would also like to note that 2011 allowed us to coordinate and strengthen ties with several of our partner organizations for the "Plant a Row" campaign. A very special "thank you" to Jedel Graff Farms for participating with "Plant a Row"! Thanks to Native Hill Farm, Happy Heart Farms, and Grant Family Farms, all of which contributed mightily to our Glean Team program. We cannot begin to thank every single volunteer, company, sponsor, advocate or member of The Growing Project in a single blog post. However, we would like to say THANK YOU to all you that have been or would like to be involved with TGP, by throwing a party! Please join us for TGP Volunteer Appreciation Night at Odells Brewery on January 25, 2012, at 7:00 PM. We would like to invite all volunteers to our event. We will also be hosting a silent auction at the event in hopes of raising money for another great project scheduled for 2012... TGPsCommunity Gardens at Habitat for Humanity! The first garden will be at the Rigden Farms Community! Stay tuned for more information this spring! Please consider joining us and RSVP no later than January 24, 2012, at 5:00 PM to ensure a free admission to our party. RSVP to Becky Weidhass at volunteer@thegrowingproject.org. I told you that you needed to put on your smartypants glasses! We've even got HOMEWORK for you! OK well, not really, we're not that scary. But, we do recommend that you check out this online discussion group for food-for-thought questions to get you thinking a little deeper about this month's reading. We'll go over these questions and any other topics that come up at next month's meeting! Until then, have a great holiday, and lots of healthy eating to you!  This week, our much awaited reading group met for the first time at The Mayor of Old Town. We decided which books would be at the top of our list, and also created our much loved name for our new group, The Garden of Readin'! Thanks to Charlee Rocco, our Clover Queen, for that one! :-) The first book on our list will be "The Omnivore's Dilemma" (TOD), by Michael Pollen. This is a foundational reading for anyone interested in the food movement and/or local food. Next, the plan is to read Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", which will take the information we learned in Omnivore's Dilemma and show us how one family lived practically throughout the year on these sound sustainable eating principles. If you are interested in joining our reading group and would like to attend next month (we want you there! We had a blast!) then you just need to grab yourself a copy of TOD and read the Part I of the book, and come prepared to discuss your thoughts on what you read over a glass of wine or a fine beer! Our next meeting will be on Jan. 12 at 7 pm, once again at The Mayor of Old Town. Bring a friend! Put your smarypants glasses on!  Still need a calendar for 2012? It's not too late to get your SEXY farmer's calendar! Liz Gaylor and Kelsi Nagi, of Slow Food, collaborated with local FC farmers to create this fabulous, funny, and inspiring 2012 pin-up calendar. You'll see many familiar faces showcased if you hang out at our farmers market for long! Maybe you can even ask them to sign yours! :-) Find them at the winter farmer's markets in the Opera Galleria. And be sure to go online and check their schedule, as it varies throughout the season. The Growing Project won the 2011 Larimer County Environmental Stewardship Award! We are proud to represent Larimer County. Read more here. The second year of the Urban Foods Outreach (UFO) program is about to begin. The UFO program has taught numerous volunteers about sustainable urban agriculture and provided much needed food to those in need. We are accepting new applications for UFO hosts and UFO host renewal applications through February 1, 2011. Please visit this page to find out more: http://www.thegrowingproject.org/become-a-ufo-garden-host.html  TGP had a great time reaching out to interested community members last night, at Slow Food Cache La Poudre's hosting of the Urban Roots documentary. This was a perfect collaboration between TGP, Slow Food, and the makers of the documentary, as once everyone was duly inspired by the great film, we were there to immediately talk to them about how they too could get involved in their local, sustainable food system. Many reported loving the film for one main reason: by now, most of us know how dire our current food system is, but we're often left with once again just hearing about the problems, and not knowing what action steps we can each take to change the tide. However, the people featured in the film were all showing us how they've taken unused, or underused, or poorly used properties, and turned them into vibrant urban gardens and farms, smack in the middle of "ghettos" which once were vibrant neighborhoods. Life and economic stability are thus returning to these communities, not to mention greater health as they eat the produce that they've taken pride in growing. If you haven't seen it, it's a must see...and then call us right after when you're all psyched up and ready to get involved!!! And thanks to our friends Kelsi Nagi and Liz Gaylor at Slow Foods for inviting us to participate with them!!! On October 8th, The Growing Project turns 3! The milestone may be small, but for us, its been a huge accomplishment. Thanks to the successful backyard gardens that sprouted up, as well as the thousands of pounds of produce that we’ve donated to the Food Bank, foster families, and transitional homes for homeless people, we’ve made a name for ourselves so that community members are wanting to be connected to our services. The daily grind and creativity it takes to continue a growing and changing non-profit is both inspiring and humbling to witness. With a steep learning curve for both our board and gardeners, things don’t always turn out as planned! Sometimes the gardens don’t grow at our pace, and the orchard still needs to mature to produce good fruit; or maybe the fundraising events don’t always match our goals. But with our dedicated board and volunteers, we’ve been blessed in so many ways. The Growing Project continues to move forward, expanding its overall abundance of both food and spirit. The question is often asked, in various ways, “What is your dream for the future” or “Where do you see yourself in 5 years”. To begin to answer, we can’t really reflect on where we want to go without first looking back on where we have been. Each year has been succinctly different, with new programs and opportunities expanding faster than we can keep up with. 1st year: The Abyss of Pain!: Logistics, red tape, 501(c)3 application, paperwork, etc... 2nd year: Finding a Home! : Plant our garden here, move our garden there, you get the picture... 3rd year: UFO’s land throughout Fort Collins! : We expand our host garden program, creating an official application process which includes a wait list since our popularity has soared...and, we find ourselves still looking for permanent land that we can call home...a place we don’t have to leave. Got land? :-) So, we made it through year 3 and doesn’t it seem like this year flew by!? Blink. It’s already time to begin discussions and preparations for year 2012--and to begin life, or what we hope is a life that we have been working towards. While it is easy to point out missed goals, time wasted, and many other disappointments, it is also JUST as easy to see the beauty, the blessings, the gifts, and the miracles we’ve experienced this year and that we see in our future. So if you find yourself at the choosing, choose year 4! It answers the question of where we see ourselves heading as we move towards our vision for what’s to come. For us here at The Growing Project, we have created a heavenly space in many gardens that has added to the abundance of our community. . .so, see you in the garden, whenever and wherever that may be...  In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it. -Frank McKinney Hubbard … and this summer, thanks to the Fort Collins Nursery, we got to live at the nursery! TGP spent 3 wonderful, sunlit days at FC nursery helping tiny little hands plant in our homemade recycled planting boxes. Each box consisted of various mystery seeds, which our tiny gardeners were eager to get home and water, to see just what the surprise seeds turn out to be! It was fun seeing the enjoyment of the families as they strolled through the green houses with their little red wagons, jamming out to the eclectic music provided by acoustic bands throughout the weekend, and running through the choke cherry trees. In the slice of one weekend we were able to capture the light of the eyes of those who will one day, we hope, grab the enthusiasm of agriculture and continue to grow food throughout their lifetime. Thanks again to our friends at Fort Collins Nursery, who helped us in celebrating a Labor-filled weekend of love! | Be our Friend! Donate!
ArchivesMay 2012 Links
|
RSS Feed