Kristin Pufahl is proof that one person can make a big difference. Thanks to Kristin, not only has Growing Home received a grant, but many helping hands as well.
Kristin works for LUSH Cosmetics, which encourages employees to nominate non-profits from their area to be considered for the LUSH Charity Pot program. Through the program, non-profits from around the world receive funding raised from proceeds from a Lush product line. Kristin heard about Growing Home from friends who were familiar with our programs, and she has also bought Growing Home produce at the Green City Farmer’s Market. Kristin nominated Growing Home because, as she says, “Growing Home is the perfect candidate for the Charity Pot program. It is a grassroots organization that is making a huge positive impact in the surrounding communities… There are so many facets to the organization that create the potential for major impact and success. We have seen the great and amazing work of the organization so far and know it will continue to grow and impact so many in a great way. So many positive things come out of Growing Home; it is truly inspiring.”
LUSH’s Employee Volunteer Program encourages employees to volunteer with Charity Pot partners and other local organizations. Kristin and four other hearty Lush employees from Chicago LUSH stores showed up on a wintery Chicago day to volunteer at the Wood Street Urban Farm. They helped prepare the classroom building for the upcoming training season by painting walls, sweeping floors, and cleaning computers and furniture. Two more volunteers, Alexis Gilgrist and Rachel Pointec, came to the Growing Home offices to help with the invitation mailout for the Annual Benefit. We loved their energy and enthusiasm. Growing Home looks forward to partnering with the LUSH team all year long!
Lush volunteers at the Wood Street Urban Farm: Tina Edwards, Razell Haynes, Alex Robbins, Amanda Proeviro, Kristin Pufahl.
We are really looking forward to the Good Food Festival and Conference. The festival of exhibitors, panels, and workshops will take place this weekend from March 15th-17th at the UIC Forum on Chicago’s near South Side. Our staff, board, and volunteers are involved in the festivities in many ways.
Here’s a quick list of when and where to catch us this weekend. Hope to see you there!
March 15
11:15am – Growing Home’s Executive Director, Harry Rhodes, is moderating a panel on “Community Success Stories”
In addition our partner at Greater Englewood Urban Agriculture Task Force, Ray Thompson, is on the panel.
All day – Growing Home’s Rural Farm Manager, Tracy Noel, Rural Farm Technician, Yoram Shanan, and two of our volunteers Kim Werst and Rachael Zuppke will be at the Good Food Festival all day manning booth #216
9:00am – Harry Rhodes and Growing Home’s Urban Farms Manager, Tim Murakami, will host a tour of our urban farms
3:30pm – Growing Home’s Community Outreach Coordinator and Co-Founder of WeFarm America, Seneca Kern, will be on a panel called “Small-Space Gardening”
We are very saddened by the untimely passing of Chef Michael Altenberg.
Statement from Harry Rhodes, Executive Director of Growing Home: “Michael has been a good friend of mine and a supporter of Growing Home for many years. In my first year at Growing Home, I delivered onions to Campagnola in Evanston – Bistro Campagne still purchases produce from our farms. Michael prepared many wonderful dishes for our annual benefits over the years and had again agreed to work with us this year.
Over the years, Michael also hired some of our program graduates. He often asked about Margaret, a graduate whom he hired straight out of our program several years ago and whom he especially admired. Last year, he came out to our Wood Street Urban Farm and was blown away by the amount of food we were growing. Michael believed in our mission and supported us from the very start. I will miss Michael, as will all of us at Growing Home. Our condolences to his family.”
We will be honoring Michael’s life and friendship with Growing Home at our Annual Benefit in May.
The 2012 Chiditarod was an incredible success! Teams raised over $18,000 for Growing Home, and 25,000 pounds of food for the Chicago Food Depository! Thanks to our current matching gift program, the funds raised will go twice as far to help Growing Home increase the availability of fresh vegetables in southern Chicago, including helping create a community garden in the 8th Ward.
We would like to thank the organizers, and all of the teams and their donors, particularly Action Squad and Derailers (pictured below), each of which brought in over $5000!
See coverage and additional photos and videos in Wired and Tree Hugger!
Join us inside tomorrow at our farm stand at our first Green City Market of the year. We’ll have plenty of sweet winter spinach, spicy asian greens mix, and baby red romaine lettuce. And of course, these are all certified organic vegetables! The market is located at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (2430 N. Cannon Drive) from 8 am – 1 pm.
Chicago Whole Foods Market stores and Growing Home are pleased to announce that customers participating in the most recent One Dime at a Time (ODAAT) program have raised a record-breaking $22,775 over the course of three months, with proceeds benefiting Growing Home.
Whole Foods Chicago stores welcomed Growing Home staff to share information during the One Dime at a Time campaign
Whole Food Market’s One Dime at a Time program has been operating since 2008. Customers who provide their own bags at checkout can either take a dime off their bill, or donate the money to a designated charity. Chicago Whole Foods Market stores have raised a total of $80,000 annually for ODAAT non-profits.
Meghan Hurley, Chicago Whole Foods Marketing Team Leader, says “Growing Home’s organic food-based mission was a great fit for our charity program. They have an amazing impact on the local food movement and communities. We are proud to have Growing Home as our partner.”
Polly Washburn, Development Director for Growing Home, says “This is wonderful — and far beyond what we expected to receive from the One Dime at a Time program. A small choice, made by tens of thousands of Chicago Whole Foods customers, has an even greater impact on the lives of their fellow Chicagoans, because of a current matching grant. We want to thank everyone who participated, and let them know that their gesture translates into transformed lives. It’s a big deal to Growing Home and our clients.”
Founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market is the leading natural and organic food retailer. As America’s first national certified organic grocer, Whole Foods Market was named “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store” by Health magazine. The company’s motto, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet”™ captures its mission to ensure customer satisfaction and health, Team Member excellence and happiness, enhanced shareholder value, community support and environmental improvement. Thanks to the company’s more than 64,000 Team Members, Whole Foods Market has been ranked as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America by Fortune magazine for 15 consecutive years. The company has more than 315 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
In January, I attended the 6th biennial Organic Seed Growers Conference hosted by the Organic Seed Alliance. I went looking to gather ideas and skills to enhance Growing Home’s organic vegetable production operations. I spent three days touring coastal Washington, listening to inspiring speakers, attending how-to workshops, gathering materials, and sharing ideas (and seeds).
The 2012 conference was held in Port Townsend, Washington, near one of the world’s foremost seed production regions, Washington’s Skagit Valley. Coastal Washington, with its mild and unvaried climate, offers ideal conditions for production of cool-season crops like spinach, cabbage and broccoli. Farmland here holds value as farmland, unlike elsewhere in the U.S. where development value trumps agricultural value.
Above: Photos from the 6th Organic Seed Growers Conference
Here are some highlights from my trip.
Seed stock: Until very recently, farmers and gardeners grew, dried and stored much of their own seed for planting their fields and trading with neighbors. The result was a global seed bank of great diversity, with each seed finely adapted to a particular place, particular conditions, and a farmer’s particular taste. But things have changed. Growers no longer rely on their own seed stocks. Of all the fruits and vegetable varieties in existence in 1903, 96% are now extinct. There are relatively few varieties sold commercially, and seed in our National Germplasm Repositories ages in drawers as Federal funds are directed elsewhere. Contamination from genetically modified plant pollen threatens organic seed production worldwide, and sometimes compromises a farmer’s right to use seed.
Despite all this, there is hope. The goal for the Organic Seed Growers Conference is to share the basic knowledge needed to produce high quality seed, and to inspire a nation of organic seed advocates. New seed companies and cooperatives are popping up to serve specific regions, some with emphasis on old world varieties and some exclusive to homegrown seed stock. Some communities are even creating Seed Libraries for community sharing and expansion of seed.
Pollinators: Though some plants have mechanisms to self-pollinate or depend on wind currents to distribute pollen among plants, more than 70% of plant species depend on some kind of animal-mediated pollination. Worldwide, 35% of food crops are dependent on pollinators. This means that without pollinators, these crops would fail to produce the fruits we eat and/or the seeds we eat and plant. Unfortunately, there has been a frightening decline in both managed and wild populations of pollinating insects. Since 1950, the number of managed honeybee colonies has dropped 50%, and feral colonies have declined between 70% and 100%. Just as soil health and clean water are essential to crop production, pollinators too are essential tools in a farmer’s toolbox.
GMO Seed Study: Few people know that the World Bank conducted a four-year study on the impact of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) worldwide, and found some very interesting conclusions. The World Bank found that:
GMO’s are not needed because they do not increase intrinsic yields and they don’t respond to climate change;
Industrial agriculture and trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT benefit northern partners only (farmers in developing countries see no significant benefit); and
Agroecology and local food economies are what’s needed.
The study is both uplifting and disheartening – uplifting because it tells what so many of us already knew or suspected – disheartening because the study was commissioned by Monsanto, and when Monsanto learned that the conclusions were not beneficial to its marketing plans, it pulled funding and the report remains unpublished. The studies’ findings and its censorship from public knowledge add volume to the call for organic farmers and gardeners to stand up and take control of our seed future by growing organic seed—and for every person who eats to advocate for organic seed production.
There’s still much to do during the winter at the Wood St. Urban Farm! We just started our first seeds of the new year last week … spinach, chard, parsley, and arugula. And in only a week the first lettuce, carrot, and radish plantings will go in. Just to give you an idea, this past week’s arugula planting will be 53 days from seeding to the first cutting near the end of March. Compare this to just 18 days from seeding to harvest during the summer … the sun surely dictates our planting schedules!
Hoophouses at the Wood Street Urban Farm allow Growing Home to grow throughout the winter.
The overwintering spinach transplanted into the hoophouses last October is biding it’s time under row covers until the sun returns enough in February to begin growing again. The mizuna/mustard greens are appreciating the unusually mild winter we’ve had so far.
Winter crops are covered to prevent freezing.
Cold weather promotes sweetness in overwintered spinach and other greens.
Winter is a time to prepare for the new season ahead. For the urban farm staff the biggest change approaching is our first season at our new urban farm site. This extension of our Wood St. Urban Farm, the Honore St. Farm, will provide space this season for an additional hoophouse and more outdoor field space. We’re excited to have the ability to grow more produce for our customers, but also for the additional work opportunities this site will provide for participants in Growing Home’s transitional jobs program.
Ground posts for the new hoophouse are already installed, and the structure will be completed by early spring.
The first plantings of the season this past week were a reminder of just how soon the farm will again be overflowing with produce and bustling with activity!
The role of the Market Outreach Coordinator is to develop a customer base for Growing Home’s Wood Street Farm Stand by managing and improving infrastructure for the farm stand. In addition, the position will serve as the administrator for Growing Home’s outreach and marketing efforts in Englewood.
Update (02/22/2012): We are no longer accepting applications for this position. No phone calls please.
Growing Home is thrilled to announce that we will be the recipient of fundraising during the 2012 Chiditarod!
The organizers of Chiditarod describe it as “a mobile food drive that combines elements of Alaska’s Iditarod with a costumed race and Chicago’s own unique brand of social activism.” On March 3, 5-person teams of racers will don hilarious costumes while pushing shopping carts filled with canned food through the streets of Chicago.
The Chiditarod draws together over 800 people as participants and spectators, and has raised over 46,000 pounds of food and over $21,000 in direct donations since its inception in 2006. The food items will be donated this year to The Greater Chicago Food Depository, a nonprofit food distribution and training center that supplies 69 million pounds of nonperishable food, fresh produce, dairy products and meat to 650 pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters for feeding more than 678,000 adults and children in Cook County each year.
Many teams will also conduct a fundraising drive as part of their race, and the recipient for 2012 will be Growing Home, collaborating on a community garden project with the 8th Ward. Thanks to our current matching drive, donations will go twice as far!
We are excited to be a part of The Chiditarod!Register before February 18 to participate in this fun, worthy event! Then sign up here to set up a fundraising page for your team, to benefit Growing Home.
