Coming this Spring: Life Lab Hosts School Garden Workshops

Announcing Life Lab's School Garden Workshops: Spring-Summer 2013 In Life Lab's amazing Garden Classroom on the UC Santa Cruz campus!
 Professional trainers will bring inspiration and information to educators interested in bringing learning to life in the garden.

 Attend a workshop and:

- be inspired by Life Lab's model educational garden site

- take a walking tour of the 25-acre UCSC Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems organic farm

- meet and learn from other garden-based educators

- enjoy a farm fresh meal

- take home loads of helpful resources

- earn 1 unit of semester credit per day

2013 Spring-Summer Life Lab Educator Workshops include:

- Thursday, March 7 - Santa Cruz School Food and Garden Tour

- Friday, March 8 - Plant It, Grow It, Eat It! Garden-Enhanced Nutrition Education (Grades K-8)

- Saturday, March 16 - Sowing the Seeds of Wonder: Discovering the Garden in Early Childhood Education

- Thursday-Friday, March 21-22 - The Growing Classroom: An Introduction to Garden-Based Learning (Grades 2-6)

- Monday-Tuesday, April 8-9 - Growing Healthy, Strong, Inspired Teens (Grades 9-12)

- Saturday, April 27 - Common Core Literacy in Science (Grades 6-12)

- Saturday-Sunday, August 17-18 - The Growing Classroom: An Introduction to Garden-Based Learning (Grades 2-6)

For more details and registration information, visit: http://www.lifelab.org/gcworkshops/

Thanks Gardens Project!

This past November, a big winter storm wiped out the roof of one of the hoop houses at The Learning Garden at Fort Bragg High School, a project of the Noyo Food Forest.  NFF is a longtime friend and partner to the Gardens Project (and member of the Gardens Network) and we wanted to see that hoophouse growing fresh greens for the Fort Bragg Unified School District once again.

NFF asked if the Gardens Project could cover the $1,400 bill to fix the roof and add sliding doors to both ends of the structure.  With the Gardens Project support, the “south hoop” is back in action and producing fresh organic greens for school lunch. 

Huge thanks to all of our donors who make these kinds of gifts possible!

NFF'S New Executive Director!

The Noyo Food Forest is delighted to announce that our new Executive Director is Linda Pack. Linda comes with proven leadership skills and expertise in management gained from years of experience in local retail, public service and education.

Linda is well known in the community for her commitment to excellence. She was store Manager of Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, Dirt Cheap in Fort Bragg, and was Artistic Director of Gloriana Musical Theatre from 1980 to 2000.

"I am proud to find such a dedicated group of people to work with," Linda said, referring to the Noyo Food Forest's Board of Directors, staff, and amazing volunteers. " It is a pleasure to see the fruits of your energy and efforts literally feeding and strengthening our community."

Welcome Linda!

Natural Building in Community Gardens

I recently attended a week long Natural Building Intensive course at Emerald Earth in Boonville. In this course, we learned how to use basic materials such as wood, earth, rock, and straw to build beautiful, safe structures. The methods feel so intuitive, and the work is most often accomplished as a community. Using these techniques, you can build large homes and skyscrapers, but I'm to take what I learned and start small by constructing some structures and garden features in community gardens throughout Mendocino County. We are starting with a small cob greenhouse at the South Ukiah Head Start Preschool garden, a cob bench at the Cleveland Lane Community Garden, and counters and benches to surround the earth oven already constructed at Talmage State Preschool (there is also a cob greenhouse there!). In Willits, Mason has plans to also build a shed in the WISC garden, and in Ft. Bragg at the Learning Garden, Veronica Morales of the Noyo Food Forest plans to build an earth oven.


This is an example of a cob bench at Emerald Earth.

These structures will make the gardens even more functional, beautiful spaces for communities to gather. And the best part is, we're going to build them together, strengthening partnerships with different organization, such as the Solar Living Institute and Head Start Preschools, and building community so that we can then take what we know to share with others. I can't wait! See you out there.

happily yours,

Lovin' My Community

Five years ago, I drove into the town of Fort Bragg with little more than my weary truck could hold, my sweet dog Kenya, a broken heart and a sprinkle of hope for a better life on the Mendocino Coast. Within days, I found a job, I scored a cabin in the redwoods, and I met incredibly helpful, inspiring, loving people who let me know that I was welcome here.

I quickly found that my passion for positive, meaningful, lasting social change through community agriculture was shared by many people here and within no time I found myself united with several motivated, capable, fun-loving people. We decided on a name and a mission and we became the Noyo Food Forest.

Flash forward to the Earth Day Festival held last month at The Learning Garden at Fort Bragg High School. A fabulous gathering of the beautiful people of the Mendocino Coast! At one point during the day, from my viewpoint on stage as the event’s emcee, I welled up with tears at the sight of my community. When I looked out over the crowd, I saw the familiar smiling faces of children, elders, and every age in between celebrating the Cool Blue Planet. Over 1,500 people celebrated with us that day and over 30 local businesses and organizations came together to produce the event for the community. It was a true community event, made possible by the generous donations of 20 business sponsors and the volunteer efforts of 70 local people. Incredible!

As we cleaned up the Garden at the end of the day, I remembered my personal journey from sleeping in my truck on my first night in town, to the first meeting of the five women founders of the Noyo Food Forest in Katrina’s garage, to the digging of beds at The Learning Garden at Earth Day 2007, to this wonderful, sunny day in April 2009. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude for the people of this community, this place I call home, Fort Bragg. I am humbled by your openness to an outsider from Louisiana, your warmth, and your willingness to work hard for a better world. I’m not sure if my story would be possible in any other place.

Thank you, Fort Bragg, for embracing the vision that “Another World Is Possible!” Thank you to all of the individuals, businesses, and organizations that made Earth Day a living example of what we want our world to be like. Thank you to each of you who make this community such a wonderful place to live. And thank you, fellow Noyo Food Foresters, for your commitment to “Being the Change we wish to see in the world.”

Noyo Food Forest. This Week at The Learning Garden.

Howdy folks

Redwood elementary students will be munching on sweet tender carrots today as we made the first harvest from the greenhouse boxes yesterday. Yummy!
The highschoolers have done a great job this week planting three more beds of cucumbers, sowing greens, forking a pea bed, and helping weed as well as caring for their personal beds.Ashton made the first student harvest from his bed last week and also made a new screen for the compost. Yeah Ashton!
Veronica got in the rest of the basil, double dug a new flower bed, and prepped the outside tomato bed.
Today we will start compost tea, plant zucchini,sunflowers, cherry tomatoes and peas, and also get started on some new planter boxes for the greenhouse.
If we are lucky it will rain tonight and tomorrow. For the market today we will have delicious greens, edible flowers, and perhaps a few bouquets.
For the work day on Friday we can plant more flowers, prep a big bed for sweet peas, make compost, and work a little on the dripsystem. Please join us 1-5 nibbling on peas, Sakina

This Week in the Learning Garden‏

Greetings garden friends:
Yesterday was a whirlwind of little kids from Redwood elementary. The childrenin the after school program came over to help out in the garden and wereassisted by adult and high school helpers. A good time was had by all sowingseeds, making compost, and giving the nursery a grand new covering of woodchips.
This week we will continue to work in the nursery setting up tables andmoving plants out from the shade house. Many thanks to volunteer Steve forforking another carrot bed for the next round of seeds we will sow today.Friday is always compost day if you want to learn more about composting, theworkday starts at 1:00.
The adult ROP gardening class will be taking a field trip to Noyo Hill Farm onSunday. Farmer John grows organic vegetables, mushrooms, eggs, sheep, andprovides 60 food boxes a week to our community. I would especially recommendcoming to see his row covers. We will car pool from the high school parking at10:00 am and get back by noon.
Do you have an hour to spare? We are still looking for volunteers to help atour Earth Day celebration April 26th. It will be a fun day of music, food, andworkshops with many informational booths and kids activities. To help out callKim at 937-0113.
calling for rain.
Sakina

This Week in the Learning Garden

The garden has shed her winter coat and is wearing a spring jacket of fava beans and purple sprouting broccoli.The favas are doing their thing fixing nitrogen for the soil and making great greens for the compost. If you haven't grown purple sprouting broccoli I highly recommend it. If you plant it in late summer it makes delicious purple florets through the late winter and early spring and it's very pretty.

The spring lettuce is coming on strong in the hoop house and yesterday I harvested the first of the big romaine. The high schoolers planted a bed of broccoli and sowed more flowers. Today the after school crew will sow broccoli for the plant sale and start more artichokes. The rest of the week is devoted to leaves. We will sow six pacs of lettuce, arugula, spinach and asain greens for the sale and also prep a new lettuce bed, plant it, and build a cover for it.

Volunteers are welcome to jump in Friday from 1-5. It's time to make compost and setup the nursery tables and lay down wood chips.

Ceasar salad tonight!

Sakina