Over-Winter Cover Crops

The cold weather is coming, but that doesn’t mean we’re done growing!

In fact, we’re just getting ready for the winter season. At Story Harvest on October 20th, we’re going to be planting some cover crops in the garden for the winter season. Cover crops, or “green manures,” are used to preserve healthy soil and prepare the garden for future planting.

Come help us plant our cover crops! We are planning on planting winter wheat, soft white winter wheat, spelt, (anything else?) at Story Harvest. Experience is welcomed, but not necessary!

Do you have a favorite over-winter cover crop? Let us know. Tell us your experience with cover crops!

Cornell Cooperative Extension provides a great resource for cover crop information:

http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/factsheets/ecogardening/impsoilcov.html

Mitzvah Day

On Sunday, September 23, a squirm of 4th – 6th graders from Berith Sholom (the oldest, continuously used synagogue in the state of New York) volunteered for their Mitzvah Day at the Collard City Growers’ garden.

They excitedly weeded, added layers of wood chips, built a new compost bin, picked up trash and provided a general “blitz of awesome” on a gorgeous Fall day in North Central. Neighbors were treated to a rare scene: the sounding of the Shofar, a common sight and sound in Jewish communities during these “Days of Awe” between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

We’re thankful that these youngsters (the kids too) so whole-heartedly practiced “tikkun olam” with us as many hands make light work.

Please come enjoy the fruits (well, vegetables) of lots of labor at this year’s StoryHarvest celebration on October 20… all day, and with Bread and Puppet!

p.s. Big shout out to the self-named Grub Club who made some chickens very happy later.

“Building Soil, Planting Progress”

Thanks to you, your support, seedling deliveries, tool donations, and ongoing encouragement…

Food Cycle is Metroland’s featured story this week: (click on image for jump to story)

We’ll be posting calls for volunteers soon as we: plan and build a fence for the newly acquired vacant lot, build a new, large compost bin for neighborhood collection, fabricate more cargo haulers with youth who’ll be using them, and inventory interest for residential collection.  Onward!

Kickstarting Our Way to Compost-Hauling: Youth & Pedal Powered

We’re up and running!  Please financially support (any and every amount helps) our project Food Cycle: Building Good Soil with Pedal Power.  Moolah contributed will help run our “Uptown Summer” program through which we’ll build this enterprise and its compost-hauling bicycles.  Food Cycle and Uptown Summer are collaborative efforts with Troy Bike Rescue, The Sanctuary for Independent Media (specifically Youth Media Sanctuary), and The Missing Link Street Ministry Mission.  

…and thanks!  Stay tuned for volunteer schedule, work/party days, and other excitements “out on the lot.”

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/collardcitygrowers/food-cycle-building-soil-with-pedal-power

Kids and Compost (and a FUNdraiser)

Carrying kitchen scraps to the garden while inventing a composting song

Wednesday, May 2.  On the block in N. Central Troy.  Carrying food scraps from the last “Mind, Body, Soul” Workshop at the Missing Link Street Ministry Mission.  The workshops were designed and implemented through the Spring 2012 semester by students in Prof. Branda Miller’s Art, Community, and Technology class at RPI.  Cooking healthy snacks workshop and photography by Ellie Markovitch.  Fruit and vegetables from the Veggie Mobile/Sprout of Capital District Community Gardens.  Planning space and resources also contributed by The Sanctuary for Independent Media.  Collaborations rock!

Checking the temperature on the pile.  Kids love compost!

Neighborhood compost bin temp. @ 140 degrees after a night of well-needed rain. Great questions ensued: “Why is it hot when the food scraps are cold?”  “Can I push the thermometer in the bin?”  “Can I put the woodchips on the pile?” “Can I climb in there?!”

This is what learning can look like when freed from the constraints of the classroom.  (And mandated testing.  And single-age groupings. And, yeah, many things that make our now-traditional schooling system utterly broken: unjust and inadequate.)

How do we engage young people as co-learners, co-teachers, and co-stewards of our communities and this Earth?

Sorry for the winter hiatus.  More to come on this season and beyond at Collard City Growers.

We’re having a Planting Day on Saturday, May 19 from 1 – 5 pm as part of the Troy Bike Rescue FUNdraiser and Film Festival. We’ll be planting transplants donated from local farms and local gardeners providing some lagniappe.  There will be a bike rodeo (aka bicycle obstacle course) on the lot adjacent to Collard City Growers (3337 6th Ave., btw Glen Ave. and 101st St.)  We look forward to seeing you out there, and feel free to bring those extra seedlings!

TBR_Fund_flyer(1)

My Journey as an Intern: Gannon Castner

My internship at Collard City Growers has been a truly rewarding experience. I feel very fortunate to have found people as passionate as I am about nutritional education, the benefits of local food, and economic and environmental sustainability that also operates with a community-oriented approach and organization. Collard City is growing both produce as well as the next generation of growers. Working as a demonstration garden, a composting project, and community-driven organization, Collard City Growers expands on resources found within the neighborhood, city, and region to benefit the whole community centered on 6th Avenue in North Central Troy.

Gannon hanging Sukkah "tiles" for StoryHarvest

One of the things I enjoy about this internship is the degree of involvement within the uptown community. Oftentimes, I feel sheltered at RPI, caught in the bubble on “the hill” and only associating with students who have been shipped in from all across the nation to this small, college town. Because I am from DC, I am accustomed to surrounding myself with a lot of different and radical views by opinionated and passionate people and had yet to be in an environment in Troy that reminded me of that DC-feeling. Working at Collard City has propelled me into more of the Troy community, meeting people from all social, economic, and political backgrounds in the most amazing way. I always knew I loved working with other people and getting a chance to see their viewpoints, and working at the garden is no different. I have learned an incredible amount about not only gardening and urban farming but also composting and how the community can come together and be affected by one small green plot.

Every week, I looked forward to my opportunity to leave behind the classroom, workload, and stress and dive hands-first into the garden. Weeding, shoveling woodchips and compost, and spending time nurturing the land that nurtures us gave me a valuable escape and time to clear my head before returning to the rigor of school.

Journey as an Intern: Stacey Kurian

Stacey helping Nevaeh take photos at Story Harvest

As I got on the 80 bus for the first time to head to North Troy to meet Abby Lublin of Collard City Growers, I knew I was entering something far different from the bubble on a hill that RPI can be sometimes, something that would be far different but probably more moving and perspective challenging than I could encounter on “my” side of Troy.

Fast forward one week: I am hauling wood chips and fresh soil to surround and prepare our crops for our upcoming culminating event, Story Harvest: A Celebration of Art and Food from Seed to Table. A joint project with RPI’s MFA in Media Arts student Ellie Markovitch and Collard City Growers, Story Harvest is going to be a huge celebration of the growth of the garden, food and storytelling. Everyone is eagerly waiting for October 15^th.  Kids are running to and fro the garden asking Abby who all they can invite (everyone is welcome!), we are painting paper bag tiles for the sukkah that will hold all the collected harvest with Troy School 1 students and community members are stopping by to see what they can to do to help and how they can organize. Gannon (co-intern) and I are in charge of constructing the sukkah, a temporary hut commonly used in the Jewish festival of Sukkot, a week-long harvest celebration. To do this, Abby offers all her resources which include a surplus of bamboo sticks that have been donated by a garden in East Greenbush, twine, a pair of helping hands and brain power.  As always, there are many creative minds and working hands, from the kids on the block to new Troy residents, which makes the sukkah design and construction a smooth project. To keep the sukkah in working and safe condition, we decide it isn’t a smart decision to keep it out in the garden overnight. A neighbor graciously offers his gated backyard as a storage spot that we accept and for which we thank him.

Any day at Collard City Growers during my two and a half month internship was much like this one. This is a movement characterized by collective action and collaboration. Everything that I’ve done at CCG was community involved and community driven. I’ve learned how to utilize what a community’s biggest assets are: its people, knowledge, skills and motivation.

It wasn’t until this experience that I began to identify myself as a resident of Troy and as an individual who believes in everything Collard City Growers and this coalition is working towards: a united community trying to better itself and improve its future. The way that Collard City Growers chooses to do that is to eat what you grow, reap what you sow through cooking, eating, harvesting and community building.

School 1 Visits CCG

Check out the photos from School 1’s visit to our garden.  On the Day for International Peace, Sept. 21, 2011, students and teachers came to check out the bountiful produce and paint rocks for the pathways and beds.

Photos of School 1’s visit.