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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - Sustainable Agriculture Subcommittee - 08/05/2014 South Burlington Sustainable Agriculture Subcommittee Subcommittee of the Planning Commission 575 Dorset Street South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 846-4131 www.sburl.com Meeting Date: Tuesday, August 5, 2014 Time: 7:00 pm Location: Healthy Living upstairs conference room Minutes. Present: Jess Hyman, Kindle Loomis, Rosanne Greco, Sarah Dopp, Sophie Quest. 1. Choice of representative for Underwood Task Force. Sophie Quest was chosen unanimously as representative to the Underwood Task Force. 2. Presentation: “Common Roots, Past, Present and Future”: Kindle Loomis a) What exactly we’re doing now? i) We started with a conceptual idea around providing families facing food insecurity in SB with fresh nutritious food from local farms. As our organization began to take the shape of a formal non-profit, our concepts for programs continued to grow as our understanding about the complexity of our food system increased. Now entering our 5th year of formal programing in the school district, we currently run six unique programs that all work to address individual pieces of the food system puzzle. Our programs include the following: (1) POP (Power of Produce) Club: This club takes place at the SB Farmers Market each Sunday from 10am-2pm, with the same dates of operation. The POP Club is open for children ages 5-12, who are interested in participating in their food system. Members visit the club tent at the market any Sunday they attend, sign in marking the date on their passport to health, participate in a fun and engaging educational activity of the week as well as the taste test and receive their $3 token. The POP Club tokens are redeemable only at produce stands at the market as the focus is on increasing access and consumption of more local produce, as well as providing club members with an opportunity to get to know their farmers. For Common Roots, the POP Club allows us to continue our education throughout the summer, with the added bonus of engaging the parents in their children’s education, which is a missing link during the school year. (2) South Burlington Farmers Market: Hours of operation are 10am-2pm each Sunday, the first of June through the second in October. For the ’14 season the dates are June 1st- October 12th. The market is located at 550 Dorset St. just outside the community library and high school. The market provides food including fresh local produce, local grass fed beef, pork, chickens, and goat products, delicious lunch from around the world, sweet treats including maple products and cupcakes, crafts and more! The farmers market provides an opportunity for the community to come together once a week in a convenient, fun, casual and family friendly environment. With music, juggling lessons and a slack line for kids and adults to play on, there’s no better place to be. (3) CSA: Our free CSA (community supported agriculture) program focuses on alleviating food insecurity during the summer months for families in South Burlington with children. We provide 35 SB families who are identified as facing food insecurity with a weekly CSA for a 20-week period. CSA pick up takes place at the farmers market South Burlington Sustainable Agriculture Subcommittee Subcommittee of the Planning Commission 575 Dorset Street South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 846-4131 www.sburl.com each Sunday. The social workers and nurses in each of the SB schools share families who would enjoy participating in this program with us. Our CSA shares are currently purchased from M.R. Harvest Farm in Grand Isle, with whom we have a close partnership. (4) Grow It! Gardens: Our Grow It garden is located at the Farm at South Village on Spear St. We have a standing partnership with South Village, which provides an opportunity for us to serve a few functions. We have roughly 30 raised beds on our half acre plot, which are opened by our farm educator in the spring, farmed through the season and put to bed in the fall. In spring and fall, these gardens are a destination for field trips, providing the opportunity to engage in a farm system, opening and closing beds and planting in the spring, then harvesting their crops as a new grade in the fall. This plot is unique in that students can come gain hands on experience in the educational raised beds, while in the same field trip, also get a tour of the farm just adjacent to our plot providing for conversations of economies of scale and larger conceptual principles to be taught. (5) Farm 2 Go: Is our young chef trainer program for students 6th-8th grade. F2G runs throughout the course of the school year in a series of six week long courses. Each course can have up to eight students and meets one night a week after school from 3:30-5:30. Students who participate in this program are invited by the middle school nurse because they express interested in participation, face food insecurity at home, or are under engaged in extra curricular activities. Students prepare a meal each time they meet, and go home with dinner for their family that evening. This course provides another opportunity for middle school students to connect with one another over a mutual interest and experience that’s not available though the common suit of after school choices. In addition, these courses teach tremendously valuable life skills around cooking from scratch and preparing whole meals, that are not always able to be taught in the family and consumer sciences courses due to the time and student to teacher ratio constraints. Farm 2 Go always has at least two adult educators working with the class each week. (6) Farm 2 School: Farm 2 School is also conducted as a school year program, starting in early September and running through the end of May. Our F2S educator plans an individual lesson for each month, focusing on a different type of food, typically a vegetable, fruit or grain. The lessons are scaled to be class level appropriate, engaging, educational and interactive. The educator visits each class K-5 in all three elementary schools on a monthly basis. Our educator spends one week at each elementary school with a week to plan the next month’s lessons, taste tests, etc. In the fall of ’15 each student entering 6th grade will have had Farm 2 School lessons K-5, totaling roughly 54 lessons on different foods. b) How we hope to grow? i) We’re currently in the process of planning for sustainability with our next steps forward. As we look to the future there’s tremendous possibility regarding where to take this work next. As the number of community members who are interested in this type of education South Burlington Sustainable Agriculture Subcommittee Subcommittee of the Planning Commission 575 Dorset Street South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 846-4131 www.sburl.com continues to grow, we’re looking at ways in which to grow community through deeper engagement across the board. Many of our larger scale ideas have incredible potential for the future of the underwood property. ii) We are just finishing up the tail ends of a mini bus campaign that we’ve been collaborating with School’s Out and Big Picture on, raising funds to purchase a mini-bus for the district. The cost of the bus is 45k and after the purchase, the district will take care of maintenance costs, etc. We see the mini-bus as a means by which to increase the accessibility of farms and community for students within our district. Having the ability to take students to the farms in the area provides increased hands on educational experiences ranging from agricultural practices to botany, health, economics, earth sciences; and as far as language studies, mathematics, entrepreneurial skills, etc based on the teachers interests to make those connections. We look forward to the potential of partnering high school students with middle and elementary school students to enhance the learning for all involved; this gives the high school students the opportunity to teach what they’ve learned, which builds a deeper understanding of the material for themselves while building the knowledge base for others. iii) In the future we’re also looking for space to grow our 35 CSA’s for the families we serve with that program, with the potential for increasing the number served as the years go on. Our current CSA’s come from a farm in Grand Isle, with whom we’re partnered, but as we look forward towards our goals for the future, producing that food ourselves is in our sustainability plan. Our CSA program is currently 20 weeks long from the beginning of June through mid October. As we look forward, our goal is to grow our CSA into a year round CSA through strong partnerships with local businesses. c) Dreams for the future, including Underwood i) As we look at the Underwood property, we see a community asset with endless potential. Parcels such as Underwood, with the right planning, can easily become a community hub! As we look at the future of South Burlington, and the vitality of our community, there is a significant need for locations where the community can gather, spend time, interact, work together, and truly have time to connect. These aspects strengthen a community, and if Underwood is planned to maximize it’s true potential for the city, it could serve as a healthy artery for the South Burlington community. Common Roots is tremendously interested in participating in the conversations concerning Underwood and excited about the future collaboration. 3. Educational presentation for large landowners planning PUDs. Sophie reported on conversations with Patrick O'Brien and John Belter and the report of Jeff Nick to the Planning Commission. It appears that large landowners and developers and conventional farmers do not really understand contemporary agriculture, of 2-10 acre farms, and what these can add to large development projects, possibly financially, but definitely in social capital and food security for residents. Our plan is to enlist knowledgeable people such as Will Raap, Travis Marcotte, Ben Waterman, and David Connor and prepare a presentation for one or a few landowner/developers at a time. In South Burlington Sustainable Agriculture Subcommittee Subcommittee of the Planning Commission 575 Dorset Street South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 846-4131 www.sburl.com September, Sophie and Sarah will prepare a list of possible landowners. Meanwhile, Sophie and Rosanne will speak to the above people and begin to gather ideas and information. 4. Next Meeting: September 2, 2014, 7pm, at Healthy Living Conference Room. Respectfully submitted, Sophie Quest Chair Sustainable Agriculture sub-committee