On Saturday, OKT garden coaches, Jeff Smith and Camilla Voelkers, picked up the organic starter food plants that Blandford Farm grower, Aaron Snippe, tended for the OKT’s Food Diversity Project yard and community gardens. This slide show gives you a peak inside the greenhouse. Thank you, Aaron, for all of your great work!
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Southeast Area Farmers’ Market kicks-off season June 20
The Southeast Area Farmers’ Market kicks off its 2014 season June 20. The market will continue at its previous locations:
· Fridays, 3 to 7 p.m. at Garfield Park, Burton Street and Madison Avenue SE.
· Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Gerald R Ford Academic Center, Madison Avenue just south of Franklin Street SE.
Both market sites will feature local, chemical free produce and accept SNAP/EBT, Double Up Food Bucks and WIC & Sr. ProjectFresh as well as cash and debit cards.
This marks the fourth year that local food justice non-profit, Our Kitchen Table (OKT), has managed the market in partnership with the Kent County Health Department and Greater Grand Rapids Food System Council.OKT has hired Dorothy Griswold as the market’s new manager. Griswold has been working in the local food movement in Grand Rapids for 11 years. She actually helped to found the Southeast Area Farmers’ Market when it first opened nearly a decade ago.
2014 OKT-sponsored market events
· June 28 Summer Celebration with special activities and music.
· July 10, 11 & 12 and Sept. 4 & 6, Urban Foraging Workshop.
· Aug. 1& 2, Make Your Own Personal Care Items Workshop
· Sept. 18 & 20, Art at the Market
· Oct. 11, Greens Cook-off and Fried Green Tomato Festival
· Oct. 16& 18, World Food Day Activities
· Oct. 25, Fall Celebration
Southeast Area Farmers’ Market opens June 20
The Southeast Area Farmers’ Market kicks off its 2014 season June 20. The market will continue at its previous locations:
- Fridays, 3 to 7 p.m. at Garfield Park, Burton Street and Madison Avenue SE.
- Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Gerald R Ford Academic Center, Madison Avenue just south of Franklin Street SE.
Both market sites will feature local, chemical free produce and accept SNAP/EBT, Double Up Food Bucks and WIC & Sr. ProjectFresh as well as cash and debit cards.
This marks the fourth year that local food justice non-profit, Our Kitchen Table (OKT), has managed the market in partnership with the Kent County Health Department and Greater Grand Rapids Food System Council.OKT has hired Dorothy Griswold as the market’s new manager. Griswold has been working in the local food movement in Grand Rapids for 11 years. She actually helped to found the Southeast Area Farmers’ Market when it first opened nearly a decade ago.
2014 OKT-sponsored market events
June 28 Summer Celebration with special activities and music.- July 10, 11 & 12 and Sept. 4 & 6, Urban Foraging Workshop.
- Aug. 1& 2, Make Your Own Personal Care Items Workshop
- Sept. 18 & 20, Art at the Market
- Oct. 11, Greens Cook-off and Fried Green Tomato Festival
- Oct. 16& 18, World Food Day Activities
- Oct. 25, Fall Celebration
Funding for the Southeast Area Farmers’ Market is provided by a grant from the W K Kellogg Foundation and ACCESS of West Michigan.
A farm focused on food justice, Sandhill CSA still has shares available
Though located just outside of Hastings in Barry County, Sandhill CSA farm is delivering shares to the Grand Rapids area beginning June 13. For $300, shareholders receive a healthy portion of organic produce every week through the end of October—and shares are still available. Farmers, Scot Miller, Jenn Seif, and Ron Irvine, also offer meat and poultry shares for an additional cost. A Seeds of Justice “sowing group,” Sand Hill CSA serves as working group of Grand Rapids’ Institute for Global Education (IGE).
Like most CSA (community supported agriculture) farms, Sand Hill uses the proceeds from shares bought in the spring to cover the costs of growing. CSA shareholders get more than good food, they become educated about healthy eating habits and become part of a more sustainable food system.
Snowy was born on Sandhill CSA early spring.
Unlike other CSAs in the area, Sandhill has a specific focus on food justice. Ten percent of their produce is given away to families with income challenges. Their long-range goals include being able to provide free food shares to these and other people in Barry County who have limited access to healthy foods. Also, the farm hopes to be able to mentor micro-farm start-ups throughout Barry County.
For information or to purchase a 2014 share, contact Farmer Scot at sandhillcsa@gmail.com or (269) 792-9183.
OKT plants food garden at GR Ellington Academy of Arts & Technology
Beginning in late April, Our Kitchen Table began a new food growing project with students at Grand Rapids Ellington Academy of Arts & Technology. Garden coach Jeff Smith is working with the students pictured here to grow spring crops in two raised beds. In the process, Jeff and the children discussed topics such as soil, water, planting and harvesting. Before the school year ends, students will pick vegetables for salads and cook harvested greens to eat. Projects like this provide an opportunity for students to learn how to grow food, improve their nutrition and think about ways to be environmentally responsible.
Grow a Garden!
If you:
- Live within our four target neighborhoods (SECA. Baxter, Eastown or Garfield Park);
- Are pregnant or have children under age six,
- Have economic challenges or
- Have health challenges that can be addressed by growing your own food,
Our Kitchen Table has the FREE resources you need.
- Organic starter food plants (we grow them ourselves!)
- Educational workshops
- Soil testing
- Gardening tools, organic starter food plants
- Garden coaches, and
- Compost.
We are currently recruiting gardeners for the 2014 growing season. If you are interested, drop us an email oktable1@gmail.com or give us a call 616-206-3641.
Standing room only crowd welcomes Bryant Terry to OKT event at LINC
This gallery contains 12 photos.
OKT Urban Forester reveals secrets to eating from city’s bounty
Reposed from The Rapidianby John Wiegand (jwiegand08) on Tuesday Apr 22nd, 2014 11:41am in NEWS
Listen to the audio interview here:
https://soundcloud.com/john-wiegand/laura-casaletto-urban-foraging
As soon as Laura Casaletto planted popcorn seeds in the backyard of her family’s urban home, her love for natural foods was born. Despite her efforts, she was awarded a crumby crop of corn- but the passion stuck. Now, Laura enjoys scouring the city’s natural areas for edible fare in an activity known as “urban foraging.”
Casaletto is an Urban Forester at Our Kitchen Table (OKT), a nonprofit organization focusing on food and social justice for low income neighborhoods. She often leads walks through Grand Rapids parks and works to educate the community on the benefits of eating directly from nature. Casaletto sees urban foraging as part of a larger picture of nutrition.
“A hundred years ago, a slice a bread was ten times as nutritious as it is now,” she says. “The way that we grow the food now doesn’t allow plants to pull up the trace minerals that they used to. When you forage this stuff it is nutritious. The plants are fighting the same germs that you are fighting and it strengthens your immune system.”
OKT will host an edible plant walk at Garfield Park on April 22, to coincide with Earth Day. The walk is free and open to the public.
Tuesday! OKT Earth Day Spring Tree Tour
Tuesday April 22, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
Garfield Park Pavilion, 334 Burton St. SE
This free tree tour is part of the food justice mission of OKT.
Tree tour guide, Laura Casaletto will lead us through Garfield Park where we will munch leaves and nibble flowers together for Earth Day. The menu includes spruce tips, the nectar inside tulip tree flowers, black locust flowers, Japanese knotweed shoots, redbud blossoms and perhaps entire linden trees! We’ll certainly find something nice underfoot to add to your Mother’s Day breakfast in bed–and you’ll get a little booklet to help you recall what you learned.
If it rains, we’ll meet under the pavilion anyway!
How Well House Planted an Orchard
Reposted from Grand Rapids Urban Forest Project
By Camilla Voelker
On November 9th the Well House gardeners and 27 others planted a 15-tree orchard of apples and pears on the property of one of the newest additions to the Well House homes and gardens, 239 Sycamore SE.
WELL HOUSE IS A NEIGHBORHOOD NON-PROFIT nested in the southeast side of Grand Rapids. South of Wealthy and east of Division, we offer safe and affordable housing to people experiencing homelessness. It is not a shelter, but permanent housing. Currently, we have four houses occupied by people who were living in shelters or on the streets.
Aside from the housing component of Well House, we also grow, prepare, and preserve food primarily for and with our tenants, but also for and with our neighbors and community. With a food justice lens, we are working towards growing as much food as we can in an urban setting and sharing knowledge on preparing and preserving our own food to counter the unhealthy options provided to us. . We believe our current food system inadequately provides healthy, nutritious food options for people, especially those in our neighborhood. So working with the folks who are most marginalized by our current food system is important to us in creating change.
Finding out about the mini grants offered through the Urban Forest Project of Friends of Grand Rapids Parks, which supplies materials, support and trees for reforestation projects within the city, was a natural next step for continuing Well House’s vision for food growing. An Urban Orchard had been envisioned for the 239 Sycamore lot–which we had acquired from the Land Bank of Kent County–and it also hosts a home to be rehabilitated to house families that have been experiencing homelessness.
Expecting about 15 volunteers on this day, we were pleasantly surprised and thankful for the 27 that showed up – quite the opposite turn out than what most volunteer coordinators anticipate! With all of the fabulous volunteers, we managed to prepare the site quite quickly: trash was picked up, sod was dug up and hauled away, and holes were prepared.
Two Citizen Foresters who offered demonstrations on proper planting techniques and fruit tree care guided us into planting, adding fresh soil and mulching in the trees. Another volunteer watered them in, leaving a job well done. And as one volunteer noted, “Many hands make light work.” It surely did; the community support left a tremendous imprint on Well House’s project and spirit. We are so grateful.
Our Kitchen Table 