GVI Garden Builds

 

green village initiative

UPCOMING EVENTS

 

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Upcoming Events

Hallen Elementary    68 Omega Street, Bridgeport, CT

10am-2pm

Join students, teachers, and Builder Beyond Borders at GVI’s edible school garden build. Stay for an hour or come for the whole day!!! Please bring shovels, rakes and WHEELBARROWS! — but mostly, just bring yourselves.  Any questions, contact Monique at moniqueb@optonline.net.

Live Green Connecticut    Taylor Farm Park, Norwalk, CT

Saturday  10am-4pm / Sunday  11am-4pm

Connecticut’s premier, green-living festival. Featuring local green initiatives and porjects going on in the communities across the state. Over 200 exhibitors. Music. Fun activities for the kids. Free admission.

Discovery Magnet   1450 Park Avenue, Bridgeport, CT

10am-2pm

Join students, teachers, and Builder Beyond Borders at GVI’s edible school garden build. Stay for an hour or come for the whole day!!! Please bring shovels, rakes and WHEELBARROWS! — but mostly, just bring yourselves.  Any questions, contact Monique at moniqueb@optonline.net.

September 2012

September 15th

September

15th and 16th

September 29th

Batalla Elementary    600 Howard Avenue, Bridgeport, CT

10am-2pm

Join students, teachers, and Builder Beyond Borders at GVI’s edible school garden build. Stay for an hour or come for the whole day!!! Please bring shovels, rakes and WHEELBARROWS! — but mostly, just bring yourselves.  Any questions, contact Monique at moniqueb@optonline.net.

Reservoir Urban Farm     1469 Reservoir Avenue, Bridgeport, CT

9am-4pm

Join us as we BREAK GROUND at the much anticipated Urban Farm on Reservoir Avenue. We will start building what will soon be over 100 32 ft. garden beds. The food grown there will help feed the local community and provide nutritious food to the Bridgeport School cafeterias. The farm will also act as a HUB for the edible gardens we have built at schools around Bridgeport. We'll supply the tools and hope you can bring your enthusiasm and helping hands to make this a wonderful beginning to an ambitious pioneering project. 

Any questions, contact Monique at  moniqueb@optonline.net.

Fixing The Future      Westport Public Library,  Westport, CT

7 pm

Fixing The Future, hosted by David Brancaccio, of public radio’s Marketplace and NOW on PBS, visits people and organizations across America that are attempting a revolution: the reinvention of the American economy. For more information, go to fixingthefuture.org

WinterFest 2013      Christ & Holy Trinity Church, Westport, CT

Details to follow. Invite will go out in early December. If you would like to join our host committee or become a sponsor, please contact Deirdre at deirdredp@optonline.net

October

October 13th

October 20th

November

November 12th

January 2013

January 26th

 

GVI Project and Volunteer Opportunity this weekend

This Saturday we will BREAK GROUND at the much anticipated Urban Farm on Reservoir Avenue in Bridgeport.
Hope you can join us as we start building what will soon be over 100 32 ft. garden beds.
The food we grow will help feed the local community and provide nutritious food to the Bridgeport School cafeterias.
The farm will also act as a HUB for the edible gardens we have built at schools around Bridgeport (15 to date).
We'll supply the tools and hope you can bring your enthusiasm and helping hands to make this a wonderful beginning
to an ambitious pioneering project.
We will gather at the site this Saturday, October 20th at 9 am.
1469 Reservoir Avenue, at the corner of Yaremich Drive.
Hope to see you there!!!
questions/more info., 
contact Monique Bosch,
moniqueb@optonline.net
check out our website:  www.gogvi.org

Workshop

Glean Team Update This season, Millstone's volunteer Glean Team harvested approximately 1,000lbs of excess crops, including kale, tomatoes, and summer/winter squash, from our own fields and at The Hickories in neighboring Ridgefield. After each gleaning, our bounty is picked up by food runners from local nonprofit,Community Plates, and distributed to those in need. Millstone Farm is a 75-acre working farm in Wilton, CT. We are helping rebuild our food community through small scale agriculture, educational activities, and events. We raise pastured heirloom breed sheep, pigs, and poultry, and grow vegetables for our CSA, local chefs, and family owned markets. Upcoming Workshops  Pickling & Preserves Sunday, October 21: 1pm - 4pm Cost: $30; RSVP to katie@millstonefarm.org or call (203) 834-2605 Millstone's resident farmer, Annie Farrell, and our good friend and CSA member, Tracy Castelli, will demonstrate several techniques for preserving the harvest. Refrigerator pickles, spicy pickled beans, and sweet berry compote are just some of the recipes we'll prepare and sample. This will be a hands-on learning experience right here in our kitchen, so be ready to get a little pickle juice on your hands!   Nutrient Dense Gardening (2 day workshop) Saturday, October 27: 9:30am - 4:30pm andSaturday, March 16, 2013: 9:30am - 4:30pm Cost: $150; Register at bionutrient.org Presented by Dan Kittredge, Executive Director of the Bionutrient Food Association and the Real Food Campaign, the workshop will help participants grasp and apply Dan's innovative and reliable principles and practices for producing healthy crops, higher yields, and more nutritious fruits and vegetables. The workshop is suitable for farmers, growers, and gardeners of all types.   For a detailed description of the workshop, and to register, visit www.bionutrient.org. Substantial financial assistance is available to farmers and others who wish to attend. Contact the course administrator, Gary Neves, for more information. Thanksgiving Turkeys... Going Fast! Due to an enthusiatic response to our August newsletter, Millstone Farm's pasture-raised Thanksgiving turkeys are almost sold out! Email your order asap to katie@millstonefarm.org and make sure a Millstone bird is the centerpiece of your holiday spread.  forward this email to a friend  Copyright © 2012 Millstone Farm, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you requested information on Millstone Farm's workshops and/or pasture-raised meats. Our mailing address is: Millstone Farm 180 Millstone Road Wilton, CT 06897 Add us to your address book  unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences

Please join me!

School Garden Cookbook

Cooking With California Food, by Alice Tebo

See link above for a great cookbook!

Tokeneke Pesto!

Pesto from the Tokeneke Garden sold at the Pumpkin Carnival! Excellent!

What's Happening At Hindley?

We had a great session yesterday with another 5^th grade class.  We planted mesclun seeds.  First we talked about them, fun and interesting facts, then the kids went into the garden  where we had three stations:  planting the mesclun; the “perfumery”—where they  learned about the herbs like lemon verbena, scented geranium and patchouli, and the kids rubbed the leaves on their wrists for perfume and cologne; and finally “what went wrong here”, where we took some collard greens bought from the store and compared them with two collards that got infested with cabbage worms.  Taught them a little about organic farming, and ways to control pests, that sort of thing.  We finally ended up the session with a “jalapeno challenge”, where we cut up bell peppers and then jalapeno peppers and those brave enough to try them did, and learned about the difference in heat between peppers and how they are measured by scoville units.  It was a great day!

Hindley harvest: School’s gardens yield a crop

By Yevgeniya Davydov on September 6, 2012 in Schools · 0 Comments

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  By the end of August, the green peppers were ready to be picked at Hindley. (Darien Times/Yevgeniya Davydov photo)

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The Hindley school community is seeing its “fruits of labor”- tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, herbs and pumpkins ready to be picked.

Last year, the elementary schools received a grant from Whole Foods for their edible garden project. Parents and community volunteers donated time and resources in the spring to build the garden area. Students took part by planting seeds and parents took turns watering the garden over the summer.

Principal Rita Ferri said that some parents suggested a location for the garden, formerly grass and shrubs, because it receives a good amount of sun every day. The adjacent road is bus stop so students can observe the plants without waiting for a scheduled time in the school day. The garden is also right outside of the cafeteria.

The main goal is for students to see the life cycle of the plants and understand what is going on. At Hindley they can examine the foods on the benches outside of the garden. It is not an official part of the science curriculum, but students learn about topics like recycling and soil with the project tied in. They also record observations in their free time.

“You start to see children who are really interested in agriculture and how Mother Earth works,” Ferri said. “Something they may not have ever had exposure to or even realized they were interested in, so it widens their dimensions.”

Some students are even trying certain vegetables for the first time, said Dee Attisani, a member of Hindley’s Parent Teacher Organization and mother of a fifth grader.

Attasi recalled a question about the small pumpkins growing in the garden. “They think it’s just for Halloween. They don’t realize you can eat the pumpkin. We start there and say that this is exactly where it comes from,” Attasi said.

Though you might not expect to see children eating their vegetables, “they’ll try it because they created it,” Ferri said. “I had a little guy who said, ‘I never had a cucumber before.’ He couldn’t even say the word.” The first grader’s class was the one to plant cucumber seeds. He took a cucumber home and enjoyed it.

In the fall, classes will plant different vegetables like spinach, lettuce and peas.

“It’s just a nice learning experience about where the food you eat actually comes from,” Attisani said. “I think it’s fantastic and the kids are excited about it.”

The gardens also fit into Darien schools healthy and organic lunch program. At Hindley, students learn about picking healthy lunches and snacks. There are not enough vegetables yet to serve the entire school, but the cafeteria staff serves them up from the garden when they are available.

Eventually Ferri hopes the project will be self-sustaining. The school implemented “Trash Free Tuesdays,” to encourage students to recycle and contribute to the school’s composting. Young children are known to leave food uneaten, Ferri said. With this program, any organic extra will go back into garden. Hindley currently has a small composter for its flower garden, but will buy a larger one with the help of the PTO. Composting will also help the garden be organic.

Residents in the area are welcomed to stop by and pick a ripe vegetable. Ferri said that their neighbors, even those without children at the school continuously compliment the garden. She also said that the community is a part of the project, as many people helped them out and support what they are doing. She believes Darien residents will help sustain the project in the future.