Sustainability @ St. Giles

Pantry donations appreciated

2010-08-15T11:55:00.000-05:00

A nice note from Doug...

"I took 2 loads of veggies to the Food Pantry last week, one on Monday and one on Friday. Luckily I had lots of tomatoes and a few cucumbers, summer squash and zucchini from the St Giles and my home gardens. I talked to one family picking up food on Monday. They didn’t know what to do with the chard and kale cooking greens but loved the other produce. On Friday a Food Pantry organizer told me that the poor using the Food Pantry have found the veggie donations this year. They are using all the food left, and are very appreciative. It made me feel good to donate to the community. Thanks to all of you who left donations for me to distribute. Perhaps we can leave our individual donor contributions in bags at the community garden for the Food Pantry driver to identify."

Pantry delivery schedule

2010-07-16T05:33:00.000-05:00

Thanks everyone for signing up to deliver veggies to the Northfield Township Pantry. Here's the schedule:

Week of July 12th-18th-Marguerite
Week of July 19th-25th-Debbie
Week of July 26th-Aug 1st-Cynthia
Week of Aug. 2nd-8th-Colette
Week of Aug. 9th-15th Doug
Week of Aug 16th-22nd- Kay
Week of Aug. 23rd-29th-Beth
Week of Aug 30th - Sept. 7th-Colette

Email Colette or the group if you are unable to deliver. We'll find someone to help out if your plans change. Thanks everyone!

Garden work day April 17

2010-04-04T19:17:00.001-05:00

Dust off those shovels and rakes! Start saving those veggie scraps! Gardening season is upon us. Join us for a garden work day... fencing, path mulching, and plot prep... Saturday, April 17 at 8 a.m.

As of April 4, one or two plots are still available! Call Jim Brooks for info.

Garden Layout

2009-11-16T06:20:00.013-06:00

Moulder
&
Gerleman

Hallas

TBD

Kerrigan

Gerleman

Piskel

Zadigian

Rogers

Page

Sato

Dim

Kerrigan

Hanzel

Brooks

Miller
&
Solano

Micheels
&
Hunkel

Northfield Township Food Pantry

Yost /
Brownie
Troop

Okoli

TBD

Fall workday 11/15

2009-11-10T20:50:00.000-06:00

Grab a pitchfork and a shovel and meet us in the garden at 1 p.m. on Sunday, 11/15 for a fall workday. We will be expanding the garden by eight plots. One of those is to be dedicated to produce for the Northfield Food Pantry, and there's a word-of-mouth campaign to fill the others. Tell your friends.

Thank you Jim!
I've asked Jim Brooks to take over some of the organizing... actually, I'd say he is de facto grand poobah at this point. My thanks to Jim for taking interest and remaining dedicated to this wonderful project -- and especially for pulling together such a hoedown for the harvest festival. Oooo-de-lolly!

Water tank news
We need to get some screening around the tank -- 5-foot wood fencing would be nice. Does anyone know of someone replacing fence, or storing extra sections? If we don't get a fence donation, maybe we'll get lucky and find a deep discount somewhere. Help us watch for that. Also, we need to hook up the gutter and the spigot. And we could use a super long hose (100+ feet) and a heavy-duty spool. If you have ideas or resources in this area, please contact Andy Rogers.

Links from Sue

2009-11-10T20:36:00.001-06:00

From Sue Schmittroth, our friend from the Northbrook Community Garden...

http://www.humeseeds.com/organic1.htm

http://www.companionplanting.net/

http://www.organicgardening.com

http://www.johnnyseeds.com

http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/

http://www.greenpeople.org/VegetableSeed.html

http://goodcheergarden.wordpress.com/

Is it still a blog if no one blogs all summer?

2009-09-20T22:01:00.002-05:00

Maybe we were too busy doing the sun dance to keep ourselves warm and attract stray UV rays. (Future readers: 2009 was a cold summer!) Or maybe we were just going off the grid and living in the 3D world -- the one with all five senses. No reason to apologize. Turns out you can grow vegetables without a running digital dialog. One of our garden members doesn't even have an email address (?!).

Harvest Festival: October 4, 2009

To celebrate the inaugural year of the St. Giles Garden of Eatin', we will gather in the undercroft on the night of the harvest moon and break bread together. We'll exchange home-cooked dishes from our garden. Our special guests will be friends from the Northbrook community garden and the St. Peter Church community garden. The event is also open to the public, and the suggested donation is $5. As a special treat, the Irish folk band One of the Girls will perform. Come join us!

Ground broken; wiring intact

2009-05-07T21:13:00.002-05:00

A spirited crowd assembled Saturday, May 2 to break ground on the St. Giles community garden. We were honored to be joined by several neighbors: Doug Gerleman, Jonna Kerrigan, and Paul and Mariko Sato. We have expanded the garden to 12 plots.

We dug a 6-inch trench to bury the base of the fence. This will keep the bunnies out. We stopped digging after we came across two mysterious wires. The utilities have now marked their territory, and we can resume digging. We will dig carefully around the electrical, cable and phone wires, and if all goes well, we'll get the fence erected and the plots tilled this Saturday, May 9.

We are hoping for a delivery of wood chips in the coming weeks -- meantime we can simply line our paths with landscape fabric.

Dates

Saturday, May 9
Join us for tilling, fencing and fellowship at 9 a.m.

Sunday, May 17
Join us for a dedication ceremony and some springtime singing in the garden at 10 a.m.

Garden half full

2009-04-02T12:41:00.002-05:00

The signup sheet indicates half of the garden plots are spoken for. That's four and a half plots. Sign up for yours ASAP so we can have a full group participating in the groundbreaking and fence raising. See earlier post for info on suggested donations and items we need.

Where's the signup sheet? On the bulletin board in the narthex.

Name the garden: behind the signup sheet is a list of suggested names. What would look good on a sign over the gate?

Garden groundbreaking

2009-03-24T12:29:00.003-05:00

At our last meeting we scheduled a garden groundbreaking/workday for Saturday, May 2.

If you're taking a plot, plan to join us for the workday (as able). Bring boots, gloves, drinking water, tools, etc. Rest the night before... we have lots of work to do. Our tasks, in order of importance:

Mark the plots and till the soil, removing or burying as much of the grass as possible
Lay fabric on the pathways and cover with pea gravel
Dig a 6" trench for the fence; dig holes for posts; erect the fence
Assemble a gate

Other tasks:

Importing some composted manure. Who has an old trailer we can borrow?
Get rain barrels hooked up.
Name the garden and make a sign. Post the sign above the gate.

More news from the meeting

Suggested donation: to cover the cost of fencing, rototilling, rain barrels and/or city water, we are asking for a donation of $60 per 10x10 plot or $30 per 4x10 half plot.
Signup sheet: I've posted a signup sheet in the narthex. About half of the plots are spoken for... so hurry! If there's a lot more interest before groundbreaking, we can expand the space.

Rogation Sunday is May 17!

Assignments

2009-02-28T11:54:00.003-06:00

According to my notes, a few of us have tasks...

Tom will look into rototilling: donations, discounts, dates.
Bob S. is looking into rain barrels and related plumbing fixtures.
Jennifer H. is providing info on square-foot gardening and other CG resources.
Andy is setting up a blog (done); creating a display and signup sheet for the garden.
Linda W. is donating a composter.

Group assignments

Come up with inspiring name/theme for the garden
Research legal/insurance issues
Start saving vegetable scraps for compost

The site

We walked the grounds and determined the old playground is our spot. It's about 40x40, and will allow for about 16 plots, which should be plenty for starters. After everyone has had a chance to take pea gravel for other uses, we'll turn under what's left (provided we find soil a few inches down). This should be a good base to start with, but will need plenty of organic matter added. Let the composting begin.

A seed is planted

2009-02-28T11:08:00.001-06:00

...and just like that, St. Giles has a sustainability team. At our kickoff meeting today we kicked around some ideas for sustaining our church and our world.

Our first task is to establish a self-supporting organic community garden. As the garden grows -- and we grow with it -- we'll explore ways to reduce energy costs and our carbon footprint.

Dates

March 19, 7 p.m. - Northbrook Environmental Quality Commission meeting re: their community garden plan
March 21, 9 a.m. - Sustainability team meeting at St. Giles
May 17 - Rogation Sunday