Kohl’s Earth Week Green Team Challenge Volunteers at Growing Power!

Posted on April 21, 2010 with 6 Comments

The exciting events of this past week have entailed some very busy and very long days at Growing Power…

But thanks to a lot of hard work from Kohl’s National Green Team Challenge, we have

• a newly expanded goat pen with improved fencing, feeders, and shelter,
• new footings and benches on our solar panel pergola,
• beds built at Maple Tree Elementary School in preparation for the upcoming growing season,
• new pallet composting bins,
• improved landscaping around the three houses adjoining our property,
• and assistance with a myriad of daily tasks (including sifting and moving compost!) and seasonal changes (including transplanting seedlings and moving more compost!) that are taking place this spring.

Kohl's A-Team volunteers help to prepare our hoophouses for summer by digging up the compost perimeter, the winter heat source.

In honor of the national 40th anniversary of Earth Day and the 10th anniversary of the Kohl’s A-Team, a group of Kohl’s employees that volunteers at various community organizations, Kohl’s organized a national volunteer event during which they distributed thousands of volunteers to local environmental non-profits.

Growing Power was lucky to receive a portion of the 1,500 volunteers from the Kohl’s Coporate Offices in Menomonee Falls–a few miles west of our location on Silver Spring Drive.  One of the seven volunteer teams of over 200 people was assigned to Growing Power because of our established and continually developing relationship.

One of Growing Power’s principles and lessons to those starting their own urban farming projects is to build partnerships within the local community.  Growing Power’s work with Kohl’s a prime example of how we build symbiotic relationships within the Milwaukee community.

Last summer, Growing Power installed four gardens at the Kohl’s Corporate Offices.  One is near the smokers’ depot, and the remaining three are adjacent to the daycare facilities for youth programs.  About 700lbs of produce from these gardens has been donated to the Hunger Task Force.

Furthermore, Kohl’s has been collecting their kitchen waste for our composting operation, and Growing Power has been holding a weekly market near the cafeteria, helping to complete the cycle of food waste to soil to good food, and back to waste, etc.  Kohl’s has also been sending regular A-Team volunteer groups to Growing Power, each visit accompanied by a grant, which helps us to keep up the hard work!

For the Earth Day event this year, in addition to 700 hours of work plus 200 more of planning , among the $400,000 that Kohl’s is donating to organizations in the City of Milwaukee, Growing Power is receiving support in the form of in kind donations and grants, in order to purchase supplies like a compressor and pnuematic staple guns, wood working supplies, and farm tools, i.e. pitchforks and shovels, etc.

The goats explore their new condos!

According to June Fischer, the Senior Manager of Corporate Sustainability, Kohl’s enjoys working with Growing Power not only because they believe in our mission to grow local and healthy food, but especially because of the work that we do with youth–one of Kohl’s core values in their volunteer work.

Growing Power loves working with Kohl’s, and would like to extend a big THANK YOU to all of the people who spent time here last week!  The staff really enjoyed working with this group.  We could not do it all without volunteers, and we hope that many of them will return in the future.

Visit Growing Power for our Earth Day open house to check out what’s been going on!

Sifting!!

Mushroom Power

Posted on March 14, 2010 with 2 Comments

Rafter Sass knows mushrooms. A graduate student at the University of Vermont who teaches sustainable farming practices, he can list Latin names of different varieties without a moment’s hesitation. His love affair with the edible fungi began as a forager. “I can’t even count the number of times when I told people that was a hobby of mine,” he said, “and I was told ‘You’re going to die.’”

Sass led two workshops on mushroom cultivation at Growing Power’s Milwaukee headquarters in late February. Will Allen recruited Sass when he recognized that mushrooms could be grown with materials already available onsite: food waste, straw, wood chips, waste paper, and spent grain from breweries. Sass managed to make the sessions both useful and amusing. “It’s important to eat fungi,” he told his students, “because they are competing with us for air.”

Click to see photo gallery on Flickr

Sixty people attended Growing Power’s hands-on training workshops on February 20th and 21st. They joined forty students in Growing Power’s Commercial Urban Agriculture program who were returning for the second of five weekend sessions. Will Allen mentioned the addition of mushrooms to the hundreds of other crops at the Milwaukee headquarters when impressing upon the participants the necessity of building their farming projects a step at a time. “We’re always adding pieces that assist other pieces of what we do,” Allen said. “The main thing we want to see is for you to get started. Don’t stand around for two years doing some planning.”

Allen also stressed the necessity of perseverance, and he told participants not to be shy about taking a single workshop on composting or aquaponics multiple times. “You have to practice the art of farming,” Allen said. “It took me five years to learn vermicomposting before I took it out to the public. Repetition is really important; it’s like learning how to shoot foul shots. Farming is an art form that should be respected.”

Register online for workshop. www.growingpower.org/workshops.htm

Seattle City Council announces “2010: Year of Urban Farming”

Posted on February 5, 2010 with 2 Comments

During a productive two day trip to Seattle, Washington; Will Allen bears witness to the declaration of 2010 as the Year of Urban Agriculture by Mayor Mike McGinn and Seattle City Council members. This campaign was announced to promote urban agriculture efforts and increase community access to locally grown food. Seattle has 68 urban gardens in 2009, the most number of  gardens in the nation run by volunteers of 3800 gardeners on 1900 plots of land.

About 500 people gathered in the auditorium on the first day of the visit hosted by Creatives4Community.

Will in Seattle