Common Ground Update – 2/24

Hey Everyone,

I’ve just received some training from Anna Masozera and am now experimenting a bit with using this website. So, bear with me. Hopefully, we can figure out a good process for keeping things up-to-date and informative. I’ll start off my first posting with the weekly update I just sent out over our listserve:

I’m sure everyone is pretty busy at this point in the semester and looking forward to the upcoming break. It’s not long off, but we still have about two weeks to get through. During that time, there are plenty of diversions we can immerse ourselves in. Hopefully, this email can highlight a few:

Supporting Farms with Food Currency and Buying Clubs
Wednesday, February 24th from 7-9pm @ Fletcher Free Library in Burlington
Take their word for it: “Join us for a discussion about some exciting new ways we can support local farmers and get more value for our food dollars at the same time.  Local, organic food doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive compared to the supermarket.  Learn about a new food currency that’s being developed to increase food security and food storage, and provide consumers with lower cost food.  We will also be discussing how to organize group buying locally as a means towards building community trust, helping each other out through tough economic times while lowering our costs for items we use regularly as well as supporting our local farms and other local producers.”

Pruning and Grafting Workshop
Saturday, February 27th from 9-4pm @ Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury
http://www.fairbanksmuseum.org/interior.php/pid/4/sid/8/mo/2/d/27/yr/2010
[Contact cpalmeri@uvm.edu for more information about the event and for information about car-pooling]

Simple/ Sacred Art of Sauerkraut Making + Immune Building Powers of Kimchee
Wednesday, February 24th from 6:30-8:30pm @ Open Arms Café in Shelburne
Directions: http://www.openarmscafe.com/Open_Arms_Cafe/Location.html
Suggested Donation: $5
For more information on any of these workshops, contact Joshua Pfeil at burlingtonalive@gmail.com

The Ecological Leaning Institute hosts:
Urban Permaculture: Mycoscaping and Edible Forest Gardening
Sunday, February 28th from 1-5pm @ University Heights South, UVM Campus
Mycoscaping with Compost
Sunday, February 28th from 7-8:30pm @ University Heights south, UVM Campus
These come highly recommended.
Register here: http://tinyurl.com/ecolearn

Medicinal Herb Farm & Agroforestry Nursery Field Day
Saturday, April 17th, Times TBD (Whole day event!) @ Crescent Moon Farm, Hyde Park, VT
The Common Ground crew will be spending a day lending a hand to Crescent Moon Farm in one of its primary woody species installment phases this year. Crescent Moon Farm is a medicinal herb and agroforestry nursery focused on
research of polycultural farm ecosystems.  This is a chance to see what a perennial-based agroecosystem looks like and learn a little bit from Farm Owner, Chris Chaisson, about the view and methods that underlie systems like these!  In exchange, Chris will be offering Elderberry Bush cuttings to be planted at Common Ground farm in our mini-perennial patch!  Chris also runs Whole Farm Services, which you can check out here: www.wholefarmservices.com
Want to come help us out and learn a bunch in the process?
Contact cpalmeri@uvm.edu by March 6th to RSVP and find out about how you can get a ride there.

Common Ground Farm Club Meeting
Wednesday, March 3rd at 8pm in the Davis Center Summit Room 400C (Pending Request)
Come learn about what Common Ground is up to and hear about planned workdays you can get involved in. I’ll send out a reminder email for this sometime early next week.

If you have anything (opinions, events, etc.) you’d like to be included in this update, please send a request to  cgsref@uvm.edu We’ll add it into our weekly message to help cut down on multiple postings.  Of course, you can still feel free to send messages out directly through the listserve.

Regards,
CG Crew