EAT minutes from January 2010
EAT meeting
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Meeting held in Van Tassell conference room at Wenatchee Valley College
12:30 – 2:15 p.m.
IN ATTENDANCE:
Doug Bergstrom
Rich Colson
Nadine Lehrer
Kim Lohse
Joan Qazi
Kerry Steffan
Michel Wiman
Upcoming Events:
February 22, 2010 at 6:30pm: Community Garden Educational Series workshop on Square Foot Gardening by WSU Master Gardener, Suzanne Sorom in the Veteran’s Hall of the Wenatchee Community Center. EAT members welcome.
February 25, 2010 from 11:30am to 5pm: Farm to School Conference in Campus Theater of Wenatchee Valley College. By invitation only to farmers and school food service directors. EAT is hosting and organizing in collaboration with WSU Small Farms and Agro-Forestry.
Treasurer’s Report:
Current balance: $957.40, but will go up to $1,270.40, including the money from calendar sales.
Total calendar sales, to date: $821.
Calendar sales updates:
Calendars can now be marked down to ½ price ($5).
They have been selling well at Red Bird Café, Pretiola, and Wenatchee Natural Foods.
Kerry will be checking in with Top Food to see how their sales are going.
Rich has extra calendars, if anyone needs some.
In other news:
Last Saturday, Joan presented EAT’s Community Food Asssessment to the Food Access Coalition in Ellensburg. They are interested in doing something similar to Wenatchee’s CFA. Joan will post the powerpoint on our website.
Community Garden Lecture Series:
In December, Doug Bergstrom was the speaker on companion planting. The next lecture is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 22 at 6:30 at the Community Center on square foot gardening.
March 15- Bruce and Grace Spencer are scheduled to speak on seed saving/seed exchange. Anyone interested in seed saving or starting a seed exchange should plan on attending.
After that, possible topics will be: April – compost/soil fertility; May – water conservation; Summer – art for the garden and potluck suppers. EAT is working to link with the Hispanic community through the community garden. Nadine has translated fliers and would be able to serve as an interpreter. We are looking into ways to better connect with and serve the Spanish-speaking members of our community. Paula Jaramillo – meeting in Leavenworth – Community Gardens – possibly a good connection in helping us meet this goal.
General Community Garden Info:
Plots are $5 each, and are 9’ x 9’ and EAT has a plot. Melinia Owens will be planting in it. Others are welcome to work with Melinia as well.
School Garden Video:
Using the footage already captured by Howl at the Moon Productions, the students at North Central Tech Skills will finish production of the video. This will be at no cost to EAT.
School Gardens:
Joan and Kerry will meet with Susan Ballinger (who works with science teachers in the Wenatchee schools) to discuss how we can get teachers more involved with the school gardens. Ideally, we would like the schools to take on more responsibility for use and maintenance of the gardens. A possible idea would be to have “clock-hour’ training sessions on how to incorporate the lessons in our curriculum guide into their classroom curriculum, with a demonstration in the established school gardens.
Farm-to-School Workshop:
Thursday, February 25 from 11:30 – 5 at Wenatchee Valley College’s campus theater. Please invite the farmers that you know. Joan has registration forms which are required for this free event. Food will be provided by Alley Café, preferably using a seasonal menu with as much local food as possible. Anyone interested in helping should contact Joan. EAT is partnering with the Ag-Forestry Leadership Group. School food service directors from 5 counties have been invited to participate: Chelan, Douglas, Okanogan, Grant, and Kittitas. All Wenatchee School Dist. Kitchen Managers have signed up to come. It is a free event, but participants need to register, so we can better estimate our food needs. Speakers to include: WSDA director possibly, Tricia Kovaks, Farm to School director at WSDA, Scott McManus, Jan Hanson WHS kitchen manager and Clayton Burroughs - “Growing Washington”. Possibly discuss the issue of food safety protection for growers. The 2nd half of the meeting will be set up to allow kitchen managers and farmers to talk with each other and “make deals.”
W.I.C. Webinar:
Kerry and Joan participated in the webinar this morning (Wed, Jan 27). Part of the webinar was to showcase success stories of WIC groups that partnered with others to increase consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables by WIC clients. The other part was dedicated to helping people through the process of putting together a grant proposal. EAT would like to partner with WIC (Laurie Riegert and Julie Kuchtyn), applying for a grant that would help meet the needs of local WIC clients. We need to determine the greatest need in our community, then work with WIC on developing a project that would best meet that need.
Nadine proposed the idea of installing backyard gardens, then training local teens to help mentor WIC families on how to maintain their gardens. This would increase vegetable consumption by local WIC clients, as well as provide training to local teens in a field that could potentially become a more full-time job in the future (“roving gardeners”). If WIC is interested in this idea, we will work with them to further develop it.
Next Meeting:
Start thinking about new officers for our group! Any takers? Currently: Joan Qazi, coordinator; Rich Colson, treasurer; and Kerry Steffan, acting secretary (for this meeting at least).
Next meeting will be Wednesday the 24th at 6:30pm in the Wenatchee World Conference Room.