The City of Donnelly and the Donnelly Downtown Revitalization Team are offering the opportunity for individuals and groups to “adopt” a 10′ x 3′ raised garden bed on Main Street (Hwy 55) in downtown Donnelly -  at the corner of Jordan Street, across from the Post Office.

What you get (at no cost to you):

* 10′ x 3′ raised garden bed in sunny downtown location.

* Soil ready to plant.

* Timed drip water irrigation.

* A few vegetable starts.

* A network of other gardeners-beginning to advanced.

* A great feeling of doing something good!

What you provide:

* Garden care (planting, weeding, monitoring, harvesting)

Interested?  Questions?  Contact…

Delta James
Planning Specialist
Business and Community Development
Sage Community Resources
PO Box 902
Donnelly, ID 83615
Mobile: 208.859.7042
Email: djames@sageidaho.com

CIMBA – to volunteer for local trail maintenance, plus info on bicylcing trails and scheduled rides

McPaws – Local animal shelter can use dog-walkers and cat handlers, as well as help with many other activities to keep the shelter running.

River Menders – Dedicated to describing a hands-on habitat volunteer project that benefits Idaho’s salmon and steelhead.

Wilderness Volunteers -  Give Something Back to America’s wild places

http://www.berkshares.org/whatareberkshares.htm

One of SOLV’s primary goals is community education.   Reading some timely and informed books will help us understand and clarify our own ideas and choices about sustainable living and the changes that are happening to our planet, our economy and our community.

If anyone has a book recommendation, please contact Renee Silvus at 634-3342 or reneesilvus@bluebottle.com

Books will be available at McCall Drug (remember to ask for the 20% discount for SOLV Book Club).

October 18th - 

“The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World“, by Wade Davis

Monday, October 18th at 6:00 pm at Melissa Newell’s McCall High School Classroom.

Wade Davis is the explorer in residence at National Geographic and renowned Anthropologist, and ethnobotanist. In his book, The Wayfinders, he explores the question, “What does it truly mean to be human and alive?” He states that we should be concerned not only with the fact that we are losing 10% of our biosphere to global warming and environmental degradation in the next 50 years but we should also be concerned with losing over 50% of our ethnosphere, which he defines as “the sum total of all thoughts, dreams, ideas, beliefs, myths, intuitions, and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.”  He explains that every two weeks another language goes to the grave and with it a culture. When we lose a culture we lose wisdom and perspective on how to be in this world.   A few of the peoples that Davis writes about in his book include the Polynesians, a group of people who’s literacy depended on reading the ocean; the Anaconda peoples of the Amazon who are masters of botany, the Incas of the Andes who built thousands of miles over extremely vertical and difficult terrain in just 100 years. It is through the indigenous wisdom of a culture, that we can learn how to treat the land, cultivate a sense of place, and learn how to co-exist with our mother earth and treat it with the respect it deserves.

This book is available at McCall Drug.  Be sure to ask for the 15% club discount.

Those attending this next book club meeting are invited to bring title recommendations for future reading.

November 15th

title as yet unselected

January 17th, 2011

title as yet unselected

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE:

Below are some other titles (in no particular order) that have been suggested.  The Book Club will possibly choose from these for future readings.   Has anyone read these and if so, can they write a little commentary for this webpage?  Reviews & other suggestions can be left in comment box at bottom or can be emailed to Renee at: reneesilvus@bluebottle.com

“The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century”, by James Howard Kunstler

“Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization” by Lester R. Brown

“Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change” by Pat Murphy

“Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy” by Lyle Estill

“The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift” by Andres R. Edwards

“Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World” by Richard Heinberg

“Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution” by Paul Hawken

“High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them“, by Jean-francois Rischard

“The Future of Life”, by Edward O. Wilson

“The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”,  by Thomas Berry

“Gaia’s Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture”,   by Toby Hemenway

“The Hundred-Year Lie: How Food and Medicine Are Destroying Your Health”, by Randall Fitzgerald

Additional book titles recommended by SOLV members can be found HERE.

PAST BOOKS:

May ’10:  “Depletion and Abundance: Life on the Home Front”, by Sharon Astyk

Jan. ’10:  “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future”, by Bill McKibben

Nov. ’09:  “In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto” by Michael Pollan

SUSTAINABILITY BOOK DISCUSSIONS

So we can better educate ourselves on sustainability issues, SOLV is beginning bi-monthly book discussion evenings.  For more info on our next meeting and the Book Club, click HERE.

PAST WORKSHOPS:

CAMPBELL’S BONE STOCKING, Offered by: Steve and Deb Campbell, 1/24/10

MAKING ELDERBERRY MEDICINAL TINCTURE, Offered by:  Renee Silvus, 10/17/09

FERMENTED FOODS, Offered by:  Debra Campbell and Margi McDaniel, 10/22/09

WINTER SQUASH / HONORING OUR ANCESTORS: EVERY RECIPE TELLS A STORY,  Offered by:  Roseana McCauley  10/28/09

McCall Community Garden design for 2010, by Jennifer Church

Posted in Food / Home / Garden ]]> http://sustainableoutlook.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/community-garden-design/feed/ 0 Claire Remsberg gardendesign2010a http://sustainableoutlook.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/garden-gallery/ http://sustainableoutlook.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/garden-gallery/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:15:27 +0000 Claire Remsberg http://sustainableoutlook.wordpress.com/?p=1143 ]]> Here are some recent photos from our Community Garden:

garden bounty, 8/11/10

irrigation lines in the zucchini & tomato, July 2010

kale, lettuce, broccoli, onions, peas, beets, July 2010

four - 100 ft rows of raised beds from recycled redwood decking, July 2010

Claire, Roseanna, Art & Thelma raking filled beds, with Don in the cab, 5/26/10

Marilyn & Claire planting peas & onions, 5/23/10

Don's skid steer filling newspaper-lined beds with manure/top soil mixture, 5/19/10

Art & Claire raking and handling filled beds, 5/19/10

Art, Emily, Karen & Claire pulling nails from reclaimed redwood, 5/16/10

Claire, Emily & Karen picking out grass rhizomes 5/16/10

four 20-ft beds end-to-end, 5/16/10

Here are some 2009 photos from our Community Garden:

food bank donation: potatoes, carrots & beets 9/28/09

carrots - small this first year, but still yummy 9-28-09

red potato harvest, next to row of carrots 9/28/09

harvesting for the food bank, 8/19/09

produce on its way to food bank, 8/19/09

rows of plenty, 8/12/09

Bob & Mary - weeding & thinning, 8/12/09

potatoes, 8/12/09

collard greens, 8/12/09

mustard greens, 8/12/09

lettuce 8/12/09

beets 8/12/09

bok choi, 8/12/09

zucchini, 8/12/09

shelling peas, 8/12/09

red kale, 8/12/09

Austrian pea cover crop in bloom, 8/12/09

Bob discecting seed potatoes 6/13/09

Marilyn in the potato rows 6/13/09

Marilyn, Michelle, Rosanna, Doug & Robin planting potatoes 6/13/09

Suzanne & Bob planting peas for green manure crop, 6/1/09

Art, Bob & Jennifer puzzling over jammed seeder, 6/1/09

plowed garden, approx 5/25/09, photo by Jennifer Church

Informal meetings and work parties for the garden are held Wednesday evenings throughout the summer, at the McCall Community Garden behind City Market on Hwy 55 (south end of McCall), 5-7pm.  As the season demands, bring tools for planting, weeding and harvesting.

Gallery photos of the garden in progress can be viewed HERE.

Proposed garden design by Jennifer Church for 2010 and beyond can be viewed and commented on HERE.

GARDEN UPDATE 8/2/10 – Now with 400 linear feet of raised bed and an automatic drip irrigation, the garden is off and running at ever greater impressiveness (as are the weeds).  We are already harvesting lettuce, kale, radishes and peas.  The potatoes and carrots are coming along nicely too. Regular garden meetings and work parties every Wednesday 5-7pm throughout the summer at the garden.  Come enjoy the work and the harvest.

GARDEN UPDATE 5/15/10 – Nails were pulled from reclaimed redwood 2×6 decking.  Four 20′x3′ raised beds were assembled with materials ready for about 12 more.  Some of the beds were lined at the bottom with about 10 layers of recycled newspaper, in the hopes that the remaining grass roots will be smothered.

GARDEN UPDATE 3/24/10 – We are meeting every 2-3 weeks in early spring to coordinate plans for a successful garden again this year.  If you wish to get involved in a big or small way, please comment below or email to sustainable.outlook@gmail.com. Donnelly is now starting a community garden.  For more on their efforts and progress, click HERE.

GARDEN UPDATE 10/1/09 – Our first really hard frost.  Some yards might have experienced 19 degrees.

GARDEN UPDATE 9/28/09 – About half our potatoes were harvested to donate to the food bank – beautiful reds & russets.  What a wonderful treat to find hidden beneath our soil.

GARDEN UPDATE 8/21/09 – Donation today to the food bank in New Meadows (United Methodist Church). Thanks to Susan Bond for doing the delivery.

GARDEN UPDATE 8/19/09 – Today, we proudly picked some of our produce and donated extra harvest to the Heartland Food Bank: red kale, collard greens, bok choi, beets, lettuce, peas

GARDEN UPDATE 6/13/09 – Potatoes were planted this morning in the 4 remaining open rows: New Red potatoes (thanks to City Market) and some russets. We also planted some herb and veggie starts that were generously donated by Jenn Swenson, of Webster Ranch Natural Farms in Horseshoe Bend.  The chard and Austrian winter pea cover crop are up.  Thanks for all the rain Saturday night, since we do not yet have irrigation in place.

GARDEN UPDATE 6/8/09 – We were not able to get good pictures, darn it, but it was an especially beautiful evening at the Community Garden.  We planted peas, lettuce, collards, beets, carrots, Italian parsley, cilantro, chard, zucchini and maybe some other food crops.  We still hope to plant potatoes if we can find some good seed potatoes.  With luck, we will get some rain soon, since we have not watered the newly-planted seeds.

GARDEN UPDATE: 6/1/09 – We planted the green manure plowdown crop of Austrian Winter Peas, using two push type planting units, seeding about 3/4 of the field in a little more than an hour.  We also removed some large rocks and trash from the field. With luck, we will have rain soon for the peas. With quick work and good hands we will have an irrigation system very soon too.  About 1/4 if the plowed field remains for planting annual food crops this season, which needs to be done soon. See below for Planting Committee members.  Those interested in design & layout general  aspects of this project should contact Jennifer Church or other Planting Committee members (see below).  There will be a fencing party soon – another chance for many hands to make light work.  Stay tuned for date & time.  For progress photos of the garden, see the GARDEN GALLERY.

For preliminary garden design proposals provided by Jennifer Church, CLICK HERE.

SHARED GARDENS & YARDS -  “I have a garden that I would like to share with others.”  -OR-   “I would like to garden but do not have a space of my own.”  -OR-   “I have a yard that can be used for gardening if someone is interested.”

GARDENING LABOR -  “I am willing to work in a garden for free or for trade in product.” -OR  “I need help in my garden.”

GARDENING EDUCATION -  “I know how to garden and am willing to teach others.”  -OR-  “I know how to put up food that is grown in a garden and I am willing to teach others.”  -OR-  “I want to learn to garden and to put up food.”

SHARED GARDEN PRODUCE -  “I have or will have garden produce to share or trade.”

In the reply box below,  please add your name and comments regarding your interest to share and network with the local food and gardening community.  Please include your email address, other contact information and the terms of your offer.