Meeting February 6th 9:30am

Our local and very best Peekskill Coffee House

Greetings, Gardenistas!
We have a meeting tomorrow, Saturday Feb. 6th, at 9:30 a.m. at the coffeehouse. It’s the first of our regular first-Saturday-of-the-month meetings.

Please join us as we discuss what’s new, where we are going and all sorts of other important tasks to do to establish Peekskill’s Community Garden(s).

And remember, for all those who are interested, the Westchester Community Garden Network thing is on Sunday, February 7th at noon. See you- Barbara

forest view garden proposal/ vision to present at common council meeting on Tuesday nite, 7:30

Hello Gardenists

I went to the forest view garden today.  In light of the facts that the spot will take quite an investment in infrastructure to make it into a full blown community garden featuring vegetables, its a sunny wet meadow which is a resource in itself, and that our cities schools are facing drastic budget cuts, I think we should consider investing our resources in community – school gardens to start.  The schools have some of the infrastructure we need in place already to get going, such as walled courtyards, greenhouses, hose bibs and they are linked to the community to draw on for support and involvement.

We can start small with the Forest View site.  We have already planted some garlic there, (we put it in as soon as we got approval to have a garden there) and have ordered some high bush blueberries.  We selected garlic because we could plant it at that time of year, and doesn’t require fencing.     There is some concern from the City that whatever fence we install is aestheticly pleasing.  We could start by inviting community members who are interested to build raised vegetable beds in the drier areas of that spot, and protect them individually with pieces of chicken wire, which would be less obtrusive then a substantial fence, and much less expensive.  We could develop a vegetative buffer strip between route 6 and the garden, fruiting shrubs that will serve as an air filter protecting the garden from exhaust, and serve as songbird habitat.

By starting small at the forest view site, and investing the bulk of our energy at the schools, we can build community at the least expense, and determine what the needs and possibilities are for a network of gardens that serves to provide people with good food, while enhancing the educational curriculum for our cities school children.  In addition, we can develop partnerships between schools and the city, so that areas that represented burdens on the cities budget and staff, can become opportunities for learning, service and fulfillment for members of our community.

I am interested in what the members of the City Council think of this, and what they think would be a course of action that achieves the greatest good for our efforts and resources.

Barbara has invited me to speak to Common Council members  on Tuesday night.  Before I do, I would love your thoughts on this so I can fairly represent everyone.  Look forward to hearing from you and seeing you Tuesday night!

laura aka perkinator

Westchester Community Garden Network Feb. 7th 12-3pm

Westchester Community Garden Network – click to see the poster advertising this event

Courtesy of Barbara:

Pack your brown bag lunches and let’s go!!!
Joann sent this to the Googlegroup – thanks Joann!

Please see attached flier for the Westchester Community Garden Network function on Sunday, Feb. 7th, from 12—3, at the Westchester County Center. It’s free, but advanced registration is required.

Go to intergenerateny.org
I’m going, and I think we should plan a field trip there…. it might be a great opportunity to learn from other local community gardeners.
Barbara

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From Leah – I totally agree, it would give us the chance to let others know what we are about while learning about the success of other community gardens in our area.

New Meeting Times Now Regularly Scheduled

Lastly, we thought it would be good to make our general meetings monthly, on a regular schedule, so there’s never a question of whether or not we are meeting.

We picked the first Saturday of every month at 9:30 at the coffeehouse (easy to remember).

We will post reminders, too. Individual committees can meet whenever they want, and special meetings can be called as necessary, but our default meetings will be on a first-Saturday of the month basis.

So, the next meeting will Feb 6th at 9:30 a.m., coffeehouse.

Upcoming Common Council Meeting Notes

This post courtesy of Barbara:

Regarding the Common Council meeting this coming Tuesday evening;
Who of you can attend?

We want to ask the city to clarify it’s position regarding deer fencing.  How about if we have flowering bushes on the outside of fencing, obstructing the view of fence from the road?

If they won’t budge about deer fencing, Laura would like to propose to the City that we begin modestly, with 10 beds, and chicken wire fencing protecting individual plants in lieu of fencing. (Starting modestly also to give us a sense of which crops will do well, how much interest there is, etc.)

We also want to know if the city feels vandalism might be a potential issue if we don’t have security fencing (which would be expensive; chain link).

Regarding the plan to work with schools… you all know Laura has been working tirelessly on this project. Sorry to jump around a bit, but this again raises the idea of committees or individuals assigned to certain tasks. Scott is discussing plans with his church, and Laura will continue to work with schools, but I don’t think she should be doing this alone.

At the P.T.O. meeting she attended, there was much interest, but many questions posed that we are not yet ready to answer. We need to meet and start figuring out what to propose to them for future PTO meetings. Laura has a schedule of the upcoming meetings: the next one is Feb. 10th. We may not be ready for that. Is anyone willing to meet with Laura and I about presenting at the following PTO meeting?

The meeting was helpful to find out the level of interest on the part of the educators. Also, Laura learned that budgets are so tight at the schools that we will need to raise all the funding for the garden projects, we can’t count on them.
I realized that the Peekskill Education Foundation (P.E.F.) would be a viable charity to raise funds for, including the IBM employee regular giving program. We can ask that funding is earmarked for the garden projects.

Laura is excited by the idea of all schools having their own gardens at the same time.
I love this idea as well, but my own feeling is that it would be good perhaps to start with one school, (whichever has the best available land), and launch the first garden there. This would allow us to concentrate funding into one garden to really get it launched, and from this one we would learn how best to proceed with further school gardens. We could invite students and educators from the other schools to form representative groups to participate in this one “maiden” garden, then they can apply what they’ve learned at their own schools when ready. I find trying to launch multiple school gardens all at once might be biting off more than we can chew. Laura is more confidant, knowing there are master Gardeners available to help. This is something to discuss with the educators and with the city, but I’d first like to hear from the rest of you.

Lastly, we thought it would be good to make our general meetings monthly, on a regular schedule, so there’s never a question of whether or not we are meeting.

We picked the first Saturday of every month at 9:30 at the coffeehouse (easy to remember).

We will post reminders, too. Individual committees can meet whenever they want, and special meetings can be called as necessary, but our default meetings will be on a first-Saturday of the month basis.

So, the next meeting will Feb 6th at 9:30 a.m., coffeehouse.
I’ll post the whole year at some point.
Laura, did I leave anything out?

Ciao,
Barbara

Update on meeting with School PTO on Monday 1/9/10

This is our most recent draft of our letter to the the Administration office of the Peekskill Schools.  I sent it to Alma Zucco who sent it off to the Chief Executive Officer.  Unfortunately, the Chief Executive Officer is in Albany til Tuesday, (probably trying to stop budget cuts I am guessing) and so we might not get on the agenda for the meeting on Monday evening.

“Dear Members of the City of Peekskill School District PTO,

The Peekskill Community Garden group is partnering with Hudson River Health Care to inspire, organize and provide assistance to residents ofPeekskill to create community gardens in the City.

We think that the most logical place to start developing edible gardensis at the schools, for the following reasons:

The students would benefit from the educational opportunities that gardening can provide. And, by working together to grow their own nutritious food, they will learn self-reliance, teamwork, and cooperation.

This use of our communities resources, both human and financial, has the potential to benefit many in our community.

The schools already have much of the infrastructure that gardens need, such as level ground, water spigots, and greenhouses.

We would very much like to have the opportunity to present our ideas to you at your January 11th meeting.

Thank you for your consideration,”

Blog Lesson at the Coffee Shop this Saturday Jan 9th

Join us for users of this blog for a quick and fun lesson in learning how to use our blog to our advantage! Have some of your favorite coffee at our favorite Peekskill Spot: The Peekskill Coffee House.

See you there!

How to work our new blog…

From Leah:

Thought  it might be good to help our readers and board members understand how wordpress works for those who may be new to wordpress…

In this post is information about titles for us blog users, creating posts, rss feeds (get the latest news about the blog via email or rss feed), how spam is handled here, type of pages….

Blog User Titles

First of all, as ‘users’ of this blog, we each have to have a title -this helps define what people can do and not do to the blog…the titles are a follows:

you can read more about user roles here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/

• authors (all board members and other pertinent group members) – authors can create new ‘posts’ which google group calls ‘threads’ (anyone can comment) but only authors can delete or add new posts…, they can also upload and add files, images, etc. you name it!

• contributors (can add new posts, make comments, but will not be able to upload live their posts nor can they upload any images or files…) – so far I have not chosen anyone to be a contributor (heck it sounded rather limiting!)

• administrator (owner of blog – little ol me), so that no one inadvertently deletes our blog…and can manage the pages as we grow with loads of info on our blog…

Making Comments:

Any person who has a made a comment which has been approved prior (like Barbara can at the moment)  can now easily and automatically make comments on any post…

Currently I have the comments being monitored by me initially- which I get via email, and my e-mail is open most of the day, so I immediately respond with approving them…in our near future, when we are all settled down on using the blog – we will not have to do this and I will let the comments simply fly – Authors and Administrator can delete any unwanted coments.

Any new person or visitor can also makes comments – but again, at this moment they are reviewed before going live – unless you are already given a title as author – comment away at your whim or whimsy depending upon how you feel at that very moment

RSS Feeds & Subscribing by Email:

This is a neat little feature which I highly suggest you choose one…by subscribing by email, you will receive an email only when a new post is added.

If you made a comment on a post, and want to follow any comments that come after yours, you can select that option when adding your comment. What’s extra nice about this, is that if you didn’t select the follow all comments that followed yours – you now will not be bombarded with loads of emails from all of us making comments – like it was in google groups -

The RSS Feeds are amazing…for example on my yahoo account, I have created a page for all my RSS feeds – when I want to see whats going on a blog (this one or another) I can click on this page – and voila, I can see the latest musings of that blog, including comments – this lessons my emails I receive…

- also RSS Feeds can be placed on other blogs which is also a nice feature (think free advertising!) – so if you have a facebook page for example or another blog, you could even post the RSS feed there, etc…and it gets updated automatically when there are new posts and comments – think of an RSS feed like a news feed if you will…., which frankly is exactly what it is…

SPAM – spam is wonderfully fixed – the only place where people can spam our blog is in the comments section – and wordpress weeds these out quite beautifully I must say – I have a variety of other blogs – and have never had a spam comment be automatically added – and I can easily delete it  – like any author here can…

Types of pages:

I created several pages initially to help organize ourselves and our information…

1. meeting minutes page – for just minutes and comments on those minutes…
   new minutes from new meetings can be added by any authors/contributors.
2. an about us page (which needs our updated mission statement) maybe a group photo would be nice too…
3. Standard home page which any author can add a post/image, etc… ideas for posting on this page would be maybe you checked out a spot near the park for land, took a photo, wanted to hear of everyone else’s ideas – you would create a post, add your photo, then click on publish and voila, we can all see it.  Then we can add our little two bits in the comment sections.Think of the home page is what we want our public to see easily. It will be nice once we get going..

Here are some other community garden blogs on wordpress to give you some inspiration as well as ideas for our community garden for Peekskill as to where we can take this blog to in due time:

• http://hopecommunitygarden.wordpress.com/

• http://urbanministrygarden.wordpress.com/

• http://growingourown.wordpress.com/

New Pages

I am sure we will have ideas in creating new pages…such as a links page, how our garden grows, useful gardening articles that everyone could use, a photo montage page on the growth of our garden(s)….

but the number of posts we can create is infinite…and there will always be an archive in our calendar (on the right side of the blog) where you can look back to previous posts…

When you create a new post, it is simply added on top of the previous post..so when you scroll down you will see the old post – at this moment I have set the default for 10 posts to be seen – we can change this as we go forward.

Signing up as an Author and How to Become a User of this Blog:

So if you haven’t already – I have heard from Robin, Barbara, Sunny, Laura – and I invited Scott – Peter, please email me once again…sorry.

To sign up to use the blog is a two step process – first send me your email if you haven’t already. After receiving your email, I then send you an invite via wordpress which will allow you to create a free account at wordpress…

The email will come from my wordpress username: ChefMaven – follow the instructions on becoming just a ‘user’, choose your very own user name – add your email address – once received, I can then update your user title to author, and then with your username, password that you created, can easily put up a new ‘post’ or article…

To add any new posts/threads/article – you must become an author or contributor…there is no other way.

When inviting you (via wordpress email), I will initially set you up as a contributor (set default), but once you have finished (like Barbara did) I will update your role to Author so that you can add posts to the blog.

If you have sent me your email, please know that I turned it around immediately and have invited you to become a ‘user’ of this blog – if you have not seen an email from me aka Chef Maven – then check your spam/junk mail – or ask me to send one to you again…

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Hope this helps everyone avoid confusion  – since we really wish to get going in our gardens and community garden…

I will delete this post by the end of two weeks or so, since by then we will have had all users of the google groups be moved over by then…

I will give a set of easy directions in creating posts as our next meeting…just let me know when that is…

Comments and questions welcomed!

We are getting heard! City of Peekskill Scheduled Meeting

Lovely image of downtown Peekskill

We are very happy to be having the chance to meeting with City Officials of Peekskill this upcoming August 17th where we will share our wishes for a community garden.

Although we are getting things organized, we are in eager excitement to meet with the City Officials to share with them our thoughts and goals on having a community garden. We are a talented bunch of people whose ties to bring together our diverse community of Peekskill are strong and definitely feel a community garden would be a lovely addition to our city’s growing green incentives and we hope to have a sustainable garden in the works by the end of the summer.

What are your thoughts in having a community garden in Peekskill? Share your ideas. – And if you already have a community garden in your town, let us know how you made yours a success – we would love to hear from you!

Grants and Fundraising For Community Gardens

Grants and Fundraising. – Here’s a neat little thing I found – as we are trying to get things all in order before we even put one shovel into the ground…we wish to have all our T’s crossed and our I’s dotted just so!

Have a read if you are interested…