Bellingham Urban Garden Syndicate

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Comment by Chris Elder on July 21, 2010 at 8:33am

E-BUGS

Urban Farmer Series
Winter Farming Basics with Mike Finger of Cedarville Farm
Thursday, July 22nd at 6pm at the Center for Expressive Arts and Experiential Education, 1317 Commercial Street(upstairs above Tivoli’s and Uisce’s)
Now is the time to plan and plant for winter. Join us for an evening with longtime Whatcom County farmer Mike Finger to talk about some of the finer points of fall and winter farming/gardening in Whatcom County.

Recommended donation of $5 to $10, no one turned away
www.cedarvillefarm.com
www.centerforexpressivearts.com

End of July Workparty Schedule
*Monday, July 19th at 1pm at J and Irving
Thursday, July 22nd at 9am, meet at D and Girard to carpool out to Starry Road Bean Patch
**Friday, July 23rd at 11am at D and Girard
Saturday, July 24th at 10:30am Sunnyand Garden Work Party. Meet at Sunnyland Garden at the corner of Maryland and King Streets. Bring gloves
*Monday, July 26th at 1pm at J and Irving
**Friday, July 30th at 11am at D and Girard
Saturday, July 31st at 10:30 am J and Irving Community Garden Work Party

*Every Monday meet at J and Irving at 1 pm.
**Every Friday meet at D and Girard at 11:00 AM

Volunteer Produce pick-ups.
Volunteers are encourage to come to J and Irving community Garden on Mondays. Produce from various BUGS gardens will be available for pick-up from 1 till 5 PM. Stop by and enjoy the bounty that you are helping create. Nick will be there or in a nearby garden, so feel free to fill up your sack with what is there (you’ll understand)…

Staple Crops Project
This Thursday July 22nd we will be going out to Starry road again to weed the 1 acre bean patch. Everyone has a share in this harvest, they just have to show up. We’ll be having a harvesting work-party in September as well as a process party. Car-pool from Bellingham at D and Girard St., leaving at 9:00 am. Email Nick at nick@bellinghamurbangardens.org for more details and to RSVP

Community Can
Join us Tuesday evening, July 27th at the Bellingham Food Coop Connections building, to help in the process and preservation of local produce. We’ll be making Jams, jellies, pickles, and other creations. Bring your jars, produce and ideas. Contact us for collaborative ideas. Participates will receive cans goods. Sliding Scale $10-20 suggested donation.

July Garden Potluck
Make a harvest dinner and come share with neighbors and friends. July 24th at J and Irving community Garden. Dinner starts at roughly 6:30pm. Hope to see you there.

UrbanGardenShare.org
“There is limited green space for food and flowers in this place we call the urban jungle. Matching homeowners (with garden space) to gardeners (with experience) is the perfect solution for cultivating both food production and community.” –UrbanGardenShare.org This is something people in Whatcom County have been talking about for some. UrbanGardenShare is an easy to use site matchmaking site for gardens and gardeners. Please take some time to check out the website and support UrbanGardenShare for offering this service to Whatcom County residents for free.

Urban Fruit Harvest Options
Fruit season is upon us. There are more good option this year for what to do with your harvest. The Small Potatoes Gleaning Project is available to come harvest excess fruit and distribute it from the Food Bank. The Bellingham Gleaning Network is a Transition Whatcom group that is set up to help with the fruit harvest.

BUGS is also involved with the urban fruit harvest. Currently we’re stewarding more than 20 trees located on or near our existing gardens. We are developing strategies for documenting trees, i.e. bloom time, fruit ripeness period, tree health, and working with tree owners to maximize the harvest as well as develop a plan for improving and maintaining tree health. Contact us if you have a tree or trees that need help for the harvest this season and/or if you would like to know more about our tree stewardship options such as developing a year round tree management plan. Contact chris@bellinghamurbangardens.org or nick@bellinghamurbangardens.org

Small Potatoes Gleaning Project
http://www.bellinghamfoodbank.org/our_programs/small_potatoes_glean...
Bellingham Gleaning Network Transition Whatcom
http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/group/seasonalharvest?xg_source=a...


BUGS still has Produce Shares available on a sliding scale, starting at $50. Contact nick@bellinghamurbangardens.org for more details. Thanks for all your support.

-Chris Elder

Comment by Chris Elder on July 6, 2010 at 8:35am

Hello All ~ UrbanGardenShare Bellingham and Whatcom County are online. Sign up your garden or garden needs at www.urbangardenshare.org

Comment by Nick Spring on June 19, 2010 at 9:11am

Remindered: This weekend.
Today--Join us on this beautiful Saturday evening.
Spring Feast and BUGS bikes 2 the Garden! Saturday June 19th—Bring a meal to share at BUGS Spring Feast. A potluck style event, where people can meet their neighbors, share food, stories, and talk of …urban gardening. Then those who want can join for bike tour of BUGS gardens.
Meal—starts at 6:00 Pm at J and Irving Community garden
Bike 2 the Garden—starts 7:30 PM and should last about an hour
Tomorrow--Anyone interested in helping out with the Staple Crops project, there is still room available in a carpool going out to our plot in the county. We are growing nearly an acre of 30 different varieties of dry beans, in a cooperative manner. Come help out and recieve a portion of the total yield. Leaving from our garden at D and Girard st. at 9 Am, we will be doing our first weeding of the beans. Should be fun. Contact Nick at nick@bellinghamurbangardens.org or (360)610-3700 to join.

Also we still have Syndicate Shares available.
What is a Syndicate Share?
Bellingham Urban Garden Syndicates Shares. A urban food and education based CSA program, we are offering Shares on a sliding scale ($50- and up). Shares will include bi-monthly pick up of grown and gleaning produce from BUGS gardens. People purchasing shares will be directly helping the sustainability of this program, as we implement and grow gardens in your community. Members will also have free access to our Urban Farmer education series, a resource for those wishing to learn the finer points of responsible stewardship. BUGS gardens now totals 9 urban lots (almost 1.5 acres), as well as a series of fruit trees that we are stewarding.
Please contact Nick Spring at nick@bellinghamurbangardens.org or at (360)610-3700 , if you have any questions or would like to purchase a share. Thanks for helping grow the garden community!

Comment by Chris Elder on June 7, 2010 at 12:41am

BUGS
We are now stewarding 9 plots within Bellingham, mostly centrally located within the Lettered Streets neighborhood. We’re scrambling to get the rest of our onions, the last of the potatoes, more cabbages, lettuce, and other greens in the ground. Yet we’ve also got half a yard planted in corn, a couple of meals and a whole lot o

Urban farming and vegetable gardening is a growing paradigm, where people are continuing to realize the multitude of benefits it has to offer. BUGS is developing a model to create more opportunities for people to plug in to their local agriculture and their urban ecosystem.

Garden Shares
BUGS will soon be offering Garden Shares. This is a way to help support the creation of this organization, support your neighborhood gardens, and receive part of the bounty that we grow. Shares start at $50 and up, with participants receiving 1-2 boxes of our fresh local produce a month.

Buying into the Garden Share program not only provides you with fresh produce, but also gives you unlimited free access to our Urban Farmer Education Series, and the resources and expertise that BUGS has to offer.

Shares will be sold on a first come basis, and are also available for donation to a food bank of your choosing. Go online or contact us soon, as space is limited.

Work-trade/Volunteer Opportunities
We have work groups at various gardens throughout the week. The first Saturday of every month we will have a BUGS volunteer orientation, for those looking to get more involved with our gardens. Volunteer orientation this month starts at 10:00 AM, June 5th at our Birchwood site.
All other Saturday Work-parties start at 10:30 and generally go till early afternoon.
June 12th—Meet at our new site on 2526 Moore st. (just North of Illinois St.)
June 19th—Meet at our Sunnyland Garden on the corner Maryland and King Streets, adjacent to Sunnyland Elementary School and Memorial Park
June 26th---Meet at D and Girard garden

There are also opportunities to meet and garden during the week. Happens every week. Contact Nick at (360)610-3700 for questions.

Mondays—Meet at 1:00 PM at J and Irving ‘Beth Israel Community Garden’
Fridays—Meet at 11 :00 AM and D and Girard St.


Staple Crops Project

Last Saturday, May 29th 6 of us headed out to an acre plot that BUGS is using in the county, where we planted over 30 varieties of dry beans. This is a cooperative project, where anyone wanting to help is welcome and will receive a portion of the harvest.
June 20th will be our first weeding day. All are welcome. Contact Nick at (360)-610-3700 or nick@bellinghamurbangardens.org to participate.

Upcoming classes/events
All classes are $5-$10, or we accept garden tools in lieu of payment. No one turned away.

Healing the Soil with Fungi and Mushrooms—
June 10th at 6 PM at the Sunnyland Garden (on the corner of Maryland and King Streets—one block off of James St.)
Join the Bellingham Urban Garden Syndicate(BUGS) and Alex Winstead of Cascadia Mushrooms in a hands-on workshop using fungi in an urban soil rehabilitation experiment. We will be “bioremediating” an unused section of this urban lot and discussing the use of fungi in improving and enriching urban landscapes.

Retooling—Fixing tools, and rethinking methods of cultivation
June 17th, Thursday at 7:00 PM. A short class taught by BUGS gardener, Nick Spring. This is a hands-on workshop looking into the maintenance of garden tools, and rethinking of methods of cultivation. Participant will construct their own garden ‘scythe,’ and learn the basics of tool repair, reconstruction and the future of farming tools.
This class requires registration, please email chris@bellinghamurbangardens.org or nick@bellinghamurbangardens.org to register for this class, please type Retooling in the subject line.


Spring Feast and BUGS bikes 2 the Garden!
Saturday June 19th—Bring a meal to share at BUGS Spring Feast. A potluck style event, where people can meet their neighbors, share food, stories, and talk of …urban gardening. Then those who want can join for bike tour of BUGS gardens.
• Meal—starts at 6:00 Pm at J and Irving Community garden
• Bike 2 the Garden—starts 7:30 PM and should last about an hour

Bellingham Urban Garden Syndicate
To promote, sustain, and advocate for urban agriculture in Bellingham through education, garden support, community action, and making local healthy food more accessible

Comment by Asha on May 17, 2010 at 10:48am

Not entirely sure where would be the best place to post about this, but I've had some garden boxes that have been looking pretty sad without any soil in them. I don't know anyone with a truck and have tried CraigsList in hopes of finding someone who I could flip a couples just so I could go pick up 2 yards of soil and a bit of compost, but now as it gets later in the season I either need help ASAP or toss the idea of gardening this year :(

Comment by Tris Shirley on April 17, 2010 at 10:16am

Hey Bugs,
I think some may have joined a FOOD related workgroup at the TGU. Check out the new TW event "All FOOD Workgroups Potluck" scheduled for Sunday, April 25th 5:00 PM. RSVP if you are in, or want to join, a FOOD workgroup.
Apologies to those who receive multiple copies of this notice. Among other things, we'll try to come up with a better way to communicate in the future.

Comment by Jamie Jedinak on April 6, 2010 at 11:30am

I think someone asked about wanting to raise Turkeys
Here is a posting on craigslist

http://bellingham.craigslist.org/grd/1678801907.html

Comment by Heather K on April 2, 2010 at 5:36pm

"Can urban agriculture help save our struggling cities?"
A link for encouragement on our growing urban gardens" http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52274
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Great class sponsored by BUGS on "The Organic Orchard" with Terry & Dave Maczuga was held Thurs pm!
Their rural farm & garden has extensive food and ornamental areas.
Their over 70 fruit & nut trees are managed using organic practices in a rural spacies setting. Most of the fruit trees are apples, modern, heirloom, and cider varieties, producing fruit for table and hard cider. Terry is also the farm manager for Cloud Mountain Farm.....but I know who is staying at home to do all the work there- David! If you buy your edible fruits from Cloud Mt, you might have the chance to ask Terry questions during your purchase time...or before!

Is anyone available to volunteer to film some of these classes so we can post them as resources on our TW site?

We could also use some help from someone willing to help with promoting classes/workshop on our TW website, email lists, & community beyond! Let us know!

Comment by Heather K on March 28, 2010 at 5:40pm

"The One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka is a treasure to read!
Good chance the editor, Larry Korn will be in our region....try to keep one of these evening dates open as we work towards hosting him for a couple events (Mon-5/10, Tues 5/11, Weds 5/12...). More info to follow later....Send me comment if you can help us sponsor Larry's travel expenses.
Site to review: http://www.onestrawrevolution.net/

"The ultimate goal of farming, is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings" - Masanobu Fukuoka
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Yea for Jeff W & York neighborhood for first garden-bike tour of 2010!
So sorry I missed it but was at plant sale with visiting Burnt Ridge Nursery in Fairhaven & Brian K's 'Edible Forest Gardening" class.
Can I take a weekday raincheck sometime? The spring weekends are so packed full with plant sales & garden work parties!

Comment by Susan Kroll and Sergio Moreno on March 28, 2010 at 4:54pm

Thanks for sharing all the great work being done in the York neighborhood! That was a very inspirational bike ride-garden tour!

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