New Site, New Blog! August 4, 2009

You may have noticed that the postings have dropped off in recent weeks on our wordpress blog. That’s because we have a newly redesigned web site that features our new and improved Local Foods Connection blog:

http://www.localfoodsconnection.org/blog/#blog

We’ve moved all of our blog archives over to the new site, so you’ll be able to search older entries from there. All of our future posts will be made to the new blog.  Please be sure to bookmark:

http://www.localfoodsconnection.org/blog/#blog

and to visit often. Thanks for following us on wordpress and we hope you’ll follow us on over to:

http://www.localfoodsconnection.org/blog/#blog

Farm Work Day and Cards for Sale! June 18, 2009

Sunday, June 21 United Way Day of Action – Farm Work Day

From coast to coast on June 21, the longest day of the year, United Ways across the country will participate in a nationwide ‘Day of Action’ as a call-to-action for individuals to ‘Live United’ – to give, advocate and volunteer on issues relating to education, income or health.

Local Foods Connection is participating by hosting a Farm Work Day on Sunday, June 21 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m at ZJ Farm in Solon, Iowa. We will meet up at the farm at 1:30 p.m. and finish work around 4:00 p.m.

You will be doing farm work on a small, local farm that practices sustainable agriculture. In exchange for your volunteer labor, the farmer will give LFC credit towards food purchases.

No farm experience is required! The farmers will teach you what to do.

To Sign Up

Email or call us to register. LFC office: (319) 338-2010.

Give us your phone number and an email address that you check frequently. If the weather is very bad, the farmer might cancel, and we will need to call you.

Getting to the Farm

A limited number of carpooling rides are available. Let us know right away if you need a ride.

If you have a car, please let us know if you can offer rides to other people.

Preparation for Farm Work

Dress in layers. It might be colder or hotter on a farm than in town. The wind is stronger in some rural areas than in town. You might be working in a greenhouse or a barn and need to take off layers.

Bring a hat. Bring suntan lotion.

Be prepared to get dirty! Bring old towels, garbage bags or similar item to cover your car seats and floors to protect them from mud. You might want to bring a change of shoes, so dirty shoe souls don’t mess up your floors and pedals. You can even bring a change of clothes.

Bring a bottle of water.

Farmers will provide necessary tools for working.

Please show up for the farm work day for which you’ve enrolled! The farmers will prepare for group projects, and if volunteers don’t show up, they will have lost valuable time.

Laura Dowd Photograph Notecards For Sale

Laura Dowd has created notecards from photographs she has taken of scenes on our partner farms and of flowers in the Local Foods Connection office garden. A portion of the profits from the sale of the cards goes to Local Foods Connection. You can find the cards for sale at the Bread Garden (on the ped mall in Iowa City), at the Haunted Bookshop (on the corner of Linn and Market Streets) and at the Cedar Rapids Airport. Local Foods Connection will also be selling the cards to people who visit the office and at fairs, once we have obtained our permit from the state to charge sales tax (in about a month). The cards sell for approx. $3 each  and $8.00 for a 3 pack.

The season is underway! May 26, 2009

Hi everybody – It’s Caroline here.  My apologies for the two weeks since posting last.  Now that warm weather is here and the CSA season is gearing up, it’s been busy to say the least.

I know that Laura has been overworked and underhelped in the LFC office.  And still, she’s done an amazing job setting up our latest LFC season – matching 40-some local families with CSA shares from Scattergood, Local Harvest, Oak Hill Acres, and more of our friends.  Wow!

In other news, the Iowa City Farmers Market is underway.  I stopped by the market on Wednesday night to pick up my first share from Local Harvest and was delighted to see the Chauncey Swan Parking Ramp loaded with shoppers.  I was also delighted to tear into the lettuce and bok choy in our CSA share.  One huge stir fry and one huge salad later, we’ve pretty much eaten through our first week’s share.  It was divine!

We stopped at Saturday’s market to pick up a Miller’s peach pie and an Iowa City Farmers Market t-shirt and the market was just as busy.  Considering dropping by the t-shirt booth to support the Friends of the Farmers Market.  Even better, consider donating your time to this growing group.  Email the group here if you’re willing to donate some time.  Read more about volunteer opportunities here.

If you’re a supporter of local foods, please remember that groups like Local Foods Connection and Friends of the Farmers Market don’t happen without your support.  Consider donating some of your time and energy to strengthen our local food system.  You won’t regret it!

Happy eating,
Caroline

Clear Creek Women Landowners Meeting May 11, 2009

Clear Creek Women Landowners Meeting and Field Day

Women landowners in the Clear Creek watershed (stretching from Conroy to Coralville) are invited to the Clear Creek Women Landowners Meeting and Field Day on Thursday, May 28 from 2pm-6pm beginning at the Tiffin Fire Station meeting room (221 Main St., Tiffin, IA). Women will gather with conservation staff, listen to a presentation by Abbe Hills farmer Laura Krouse, and tour local farms to view conservation practices in action.

This event, sponsored by the Clear Creek Watershed Enhancement Project, is free and open to the public. Bring yourself, your conservation questions, and some outdoor footwear, and we will provide the rest.

If you’re interested in attending the meeting or in conservation more generally, please consider completing our very brief pre-meeting survey available at:

http://tinyurl.com/clearcreekwomen

Hope to see you there!

Art & Ecology Exhibition May 13th May 4, 2009

Our friend Sarah Kanouse has forwarded the following information about her Art & Ecology students’ final exhibition.  If you’re in or near Iowa City, be sure to head over to the University of Iowa’s I-Gallery to catch the work of these talented students.  Sarah’s message follows:

—–

“Art Likes Ecology & Ecology Likes Art,” an end of semester exhibition
Closing Reception on Wednesday, May 13 from 4:00 until 6:30 p.m.
I-Gallery, Communications Center, 2nd Floor, 116 S. Madison St.
Exhibition will be on view May 8-13

“Art Likes Ecology & Ecology Likes Art” features a number of artworks engaging environmental themes, including floating gardens, a video game exploration of military ecology, an audio essay on place, and handmade books that investigate recycling and production streams. The show is the culmination of semester-long research by students in Art & Ecology, a seminar course offered in the Intermedia Department that explores artistic responses to the environment and related social issues. The show will be on view May 8-14 in the I-Gallery on the 2nd floor of the Communications Center, with a closing reception on May 13 from 4 to 6:30 p.m.

Special events plans for the closing reception include a swap of plant starts and seeds. Guests are encouraged to bring extra garden seeds and seedlings to exchange with others, though you do not need to have brought anything to leave with seeds or plants. The show will also feature the distribution of seed bombs, which are balls of clay, compost, and seeds that are allowed to dry and are then used by guerilla gardeners to brighten neglected in areas in need of some green. Refreshments will be served.

Art & Ecology is a collaborative research team composed of Courtney Cable, Sarah Kanouse, Nathan Morton, Benjamin Skolnik, and Nicole Pietrantoni. These graduate and undergraduate students and their faculty facilitator hail from Intermedia, Sculpture, Printmaking, and English.

This event is free, open to the public and sponsored by the Intermedia Program of the School of Art and Art History. Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact the School of Art and Art History at 335-1771.

We want you! May 3, 2009

We need you! Local Foods Connection has been short of volunteer-staff this past month. If you would like to volunteer in the office to help us through this difficult period, email us with options of times and dates you can come in and do some clerical work. Thanks!

Great Food Blog from Vermont April 20, 2009

Caroline here.  A great friend of mine who hails from Burlington, Vermont just brought the blog Every Kitchen Table to my attention.  The blog is penned by Rob Smart, a resident of central Vermont.  You might enjoy his recent post, “Dear Julia Child, We Need You!” The blog also has an impressive links page with various resources, as well as links to a variety of other food related blogs in the “Fellow Foodies” section.  So thank you, Stephanie, and happy reading!

Women Land & Legacy of Jackson County April 16, 2009

Subject: Women Land & Legacy presents An Estate Planning Workshop
April 23rd
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Women, Land, and Legacy of Jackson County will be hosting a very popular Estate Planning Workshop on Thursday, April 23, 2009, at the Comfort Inn in Maquoketa. The event will begin at 5:00 p.m. with the presentation “Who Gets Grandma’s Yellow Pie Plate?” by Jackson County Extension Director, Amber Matthiesen. Ms. Matthiesen’s presentation will discuss the inheritance of personal property.

From 6:00 to 7:00 attendees will have the opportunity to visit with local estate and financial planners to learn what services are available in the area.

From 7:00 to 9:00 there will be an informative talk given by the regionally-renowned speaker, Steve Bohr, of Farm Financial Services, Inc. in Cedar Rapids. Mr. Bohr’s talk will focus on what steps farm families can take to ensure a profitable future for the next generation.

Local financial and estate planners wishing to set up a booth at the event may do so by calling the Jackson Soil and Water Conservation District at 563-652-2337 ext. 3 to reserve a spot for a booth. There will be a $10 fee for all vendors.

The event is free and open to the public. This is a very popular workshop and those wishing to attend should call the Jackson Soil and Water Conservation District at 563-652-2337 ext. 3 by Tuesday, April 21, to reserve a spot. Light refreshments will be served. ********************************************************************
Thanks for your help in getting the word out about this popular workshop! Sincerely,
Courtney Myers
USDA-NRCS
603 E Platt St.
Maquoketa, IA 52060
563-652-2337 x3

MORE volunteer opportunities! April 4, 2009

Local Foods Connection and Friends of the Iowa City Farmers Market Need You!

1. Volunteer to Read a Book or Watch a Movie

Local Foods Connection offers its clients opportunities to participate in educational activities to learn more about nutrition, food and farming. The activities in which our clients can participate include:

• visit a farm
• keep a two-week food journal
• visit a farmers market
• grow a plant in a garden or flower pot
• volunteer in the community
• send a thank you card to a farmer
• take a cooking class
• share a recipe
• share their food with a neighbor or friend
• create art
• read books and watch movies

For every activity clients complete, they earn points. With those points they can shop in our small kitchenware store. Items in our inventory include pots and pans, canning equipment, strainers, serving utensils, knives and cutting boards.

If a client reads a book or watches a movie, she has a choice to either write a review or take a quiz. We are looking for volunteers to read books and watch movies off of our recommended reading list and write a quiz. Some book titles are:

• Four titles by Dr. Andrew Weil: Natural Health, Natural Medicine. Eating Well for Optimum Health. The Healthy Kitchen. Healthy Aging.
• By Dr. Mehmet Oz: You: The Owners Manual
• By Rochelle Davis & David Joachim: Fresh Choices: More Than 100 Easy Recipes for Pure Food When You Can’t Buy 100% Organic
• By Peter Menzel: Hungry Planet: What the World Eats
• By Joan Dye Gussow: This Organic Life
• By Barbara Kingsolver: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Some movie titles are:

• By Cynthia Vagnetti: Voice of Iowa Farm Women
• By Taggart Siegel: The Real Dirt on Farmer John
• By: Chris Beford: The Organic Opportunity
• By The Iowa Learning Farm: Conservation DVD set
• By Morgan Spurlock: Supersize Me
• By Chris Bedford: What Will We Eat
• By Chris Bedford: Food For the Future

More instructions will be given to volunteers when they contact us via email.

2. From Meggan Fisher: The Friends of the Iowa City Farmers Market (FFM) are currently planning a “Rumpus Fun-Raiser” Mercer Aquatic Center, April 17th from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.to benefit the Iowa City Farmers Market Kids Day (September 12th). This kid-centered event will include pizza; bake sale; educational stations on farming, nutrition, and conservation; bounce house (and other toys); live music; and a mini-market. Kids Day was a huge hit with the community last year and brought in lots of good business for our vendors. The message was clear that everyone wanted to see Kids Day happen again this year. We’d like to accommodate the increased crowd and bring in additional features. To do that, we’ll need to raise some more money.

We have a lot of work to do in the next couple of weeks to make this happen. I would like to invite you to join the new “Friends of the Market,” a volunteer pool for the Iowa City Farmers Market. There are lots of little jobs to do, almost all of which can be done on your own time. If you are interested in helping us out, please contact Meggan Fisher. Please spread the word about this event and attend with your friends and family.

I would also like to encourage everyone to consider joining the FFM for the 2009 market season. Below is a list of the activities we foresee the FFM doing. If you are interested in being kept up to date on the activities of this group, please respond to be added to my email distribution list. Although we will have periodic meetings, attendance is not requisite to join the FFM.

What will The Friends do?

• Help plan fundraisers for the market
• Regular promotions and advertising
• Finding and securing sponsorship for the market
• Monthly newsletter and weekly e-newsletter
• Website work
• Develop new Farmers Market cookbook, and other new merchandise
• Assess the success of the market
• Provide hands on assistance at the market
• And much more!

Volunteers could choose to participate once, or volunteer regularly throughout the season. We are also looking into the possibility of transforming this group into a separate non-profit foundation. The market is so important to this community. Volunteering your time is a great way to help grow this market. I welcome general input on the direction and operation of the market. Please pass this information on to anyone else you think may have an interest in joining in the discussion.

Meggan Fisher
Email Meggan here.

Women Caring For The Land Final Meeting

The following is a letter from Laura Krouse announcing the final meeting of the Women Caring for the Land group.  Please join us on April 15th!

Caroline

——————————-

Greetings ladies,

The final (at least for now) meeting of “Women Caring for the Land” is going to be Wednesday, April 15, 6:00, at Gwen’s restaurant in Lisbon.  We had such a nice lunch there the day of the field trip, everybody wanted to meet there again.  Gwen’s is right downtown in Lisbon.  She’ll have a Mexican buffet for $8.95, fish and potato bar for $6.95, or maybe a roast beef buffet especially for us for probably $8.95, or you can order off the menu.  The food is good, and there will be plenty of visiting because we’ll all be together in the big room, but be sure to bring your reading glasses because the room is a bit dim.

We’ll meet and eat at 6:00, then start our meeting about 7:00.  Our speaker will be Margaret Smith, co-owner and operator of Ash Grove Farm, near Hampton, IA.  She and her husband raise crops and livestock, and both own and rent land using crop share leases and cash leases.  She will lead “A Conversation about Farm Leasing”, and will address what types of farm leases are available, compare cash renting with crop share leases and talk about why an owner might prefer one method over the other, go over the yearly time schedule for leases and owner/operator discussions, discuss how to express your wants and needs about your land to others, and offer ideas about where to go for additional information about farm leases.

We’ll also talk a bit about how to read your conservation plan, and if we have time, see a short conservation/water quality video that has just been released.  I’ll have all the handouts available so you can pick up anything you’ve missed, or get some information for a friend.

Hope to see you soon,

Laura