Meeting Notes from Last Week

Hi All,

Here are some ideas we discussed last week--

What to do with all the veggies?
-a few different ideas came out but it became clear that most people in the club enjoy getting together for pot-luck dinners to eat the food together. So lets do it! I especially liked the idea of improve pot-luck dinners around what we have a surplus of (did someone say patty-pan squash?!). It could be kind of a giant recipe competition and cook-off. We could even compile all the recipes into a book!
- We talked about opening a booth at the Eagle Rock farmers' market which would be awesome except, first-year Jocelyn Coffin did some research and it turns out the Eagle Rock market is certified (not certified organic but certified farms). Maybe down the road we'll get there....
- Leaving some plots open for a local elementary school. I love this idea. For now we'll plant them all but maybe in the spring we can look into possible connections for this project.
- Farm to Preschool. The UEPI (which includes Giulia) just wrote a new curriculum for pre-schoolers that involves getting their hands dirty in the soil. We could partner with the pre-school on campus and help them implement the curriculum on our garden.

Art?
We are trying to set up some permanant art installations in the garden. There is an ASOC grant specifically for murals which we can apply for and possibly make some mosaic stepping stones for in between the raised beds. I think it would be AWESOME! I created a new email list for all the people who are interested in this project. I'll email you a little later :)

CHICKENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chickens are on the agenda. Annika made a beautiful drawing and detailed description of the materials we'll need to build the coop. I think a great place for it would be where all that dirt is piled up now. I was at a place that sells chicks and its best to buy them in the spring (it gets too cold in the winter for the little babies) which works really well for us because that is AT LEAST as long as it will take us to get the idea OK'd by the admin. Again, a great team of dedicated feasters signed up for this task-- there is an email group for you too so lets get jumping. For more info on chickens check the post on backyard flock biosecurity a little down the page. We're also in contact with Caitlyn Lacey from Pitzer (who heads their chicken program) and Robin Lewis at Whitman. Whitman raises birds for meat! We might not do that.

Giulia and I had out opening night of Well Fed lat night. It was pretty sweet. We used patty pan from the jardin! Look at our blog: oxywellfed.blogspot.com. ALSO if you are not yet a follower of this blog please become one (so I can at least feel like people are reading!). And become a follower of Well Fed too!