There's lots on the bill for this summer.
Awesome thing #1: Canoe trip down the Penobscot river, learning about the environment, ending with a stay with the Penobscot tribe and learning about how the land and Western civilization impacts them. As far as I know lots of people are interested in this.
Awesome thing #2: We just started reading Wendell Berry in our Discussion Group, which (of course) has sparked lots of fascinating conversation.
Awesome thing #3 (and this one is my baby) hehehehe: We're hoping to partner with another local church - specifically North Avenue Alliance Church, which has land, to start a "church farm".
This is a major part of our vision for the future of our church. We're finding that our big thing is helping to fix broken systems in our community, and one of those systems is food and cycles of poverty, and so... let's address them both and start a farm!
We went back and forth about the models for making this work:
Do we do family-sized plots and let people be responsible for their own square of earth? or do we let the whole space be planned by people who know how to do agriculture and then get volunteers to dig in the dirt on "volunteer days". I think it will be the latter. Hopefully we'll get connected with NeighborKeepers to involve people in poverty. Then the food will go towards the people who helped (they'll get paid according to the hours they spend perhaps?), cooking classes, and canning classes. I also hope we get to include some seed-saving classes.
Or... perhaps in order to not duplicate what's already happening in our community, we might collaborate with a group like Burlington Community Gardens, or Permaculture Burlington.
So now, I've just got to finish the proposal and get it to North Ave's elder board before the 3rd Monday of the month(!).
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