Hearkening the days of old

Mike McCormick of Wilmington is seen plowing a field at the Wilmington College farm on Fife Avenue on Thursday. 9-year-old Erma and her 8-year-old brother Leon pull the plow, and Mike behind it. For the second year, WC and Grow Food, Grow Hope are planting potatoes in the field for donation to local food pantries. In 2009, we harvested some 6,000 lbs. of potatoes, all of which were donated.

Kids planting at Wilmington Childcare & Learning

We continued yesterday our daily task of planting and building new garden beds at a number of our different sites around Wilmington. Eric built a new garden bed at the Wilmington Homeless Shelter, Aileen helped plant at our Mulberry Street Community Garden, and Mariah planted (with a cadre of eager helpers) at Patri-Tots Daycare Facility and Wilmington Childcare & Learning.

The students at the latter two facilities were ecstatic to be outside and working in the soil. We never get tired of taking photos of these kids, because their enthusiasm is beaming and we can tell they are genuinely excited about this weird new process of growing plants you can eat.

The kids planted tomatoes, peppers, onions and edamame, and helped map out the rest of the bed that was planted the week earlier.

We are nearing the end of the garden builds, and the first round of planting this season is almost done, too. Now, we let nature work it's magic while we watch and wait.

WYSO produces series on Wilmington, Grow Food, Grow Hope

For almost a year, a radio reporter from WYSO in Yellow Springs, a local NPR affiliate, has been interviewing people in Wilmington for a series of stories that were aired last week. Emily McCord spoke at length with several Grow Food, Grow Hope VISTAs about our experiences in Wilmington and what it means to be working in a community that many of us know so well.

The series, titled "Wilmington's Homegrown Hope" aired as five separate stories, each of which ran during Morning Edition on May 10 through the 14th. Eric Guindon and John Cropper, our Community Outreach and Public Relations coordinators, respectively, were featured in the second installment, and Dessie Buchanan and her efforts at the Clinton County Farmers Market were the focus of the third day's story.

John Cropper and Eric Guindon, left. Dessie Buchanan, right. Photos by Briana Brough for WYSO

All five installments were aired as one long story on Sunday morning, and we heard from several people yesterday who heard the story on WOSU, the Columbus NPR affiliate. If you haven't yet listened to them, we highly recommend you do. They're linked below.

We want to thank Emily for her excellent job telling a complex story, one that other media organizations have tried to tell in shorter time and often missed the mark. Her thoroughness and narrative voice make each story fit together seamlessly. Of all the national media attention we've received this last year, from People Magazine to 60 Minutes to the Associated Press, Emily's story stands apart. We are humbled and grateful, and reminded yet again that the work we're able to do is important work.

Wilmington's Homegrown Hope Part 1
Wilmington's Homegrown Hope Part 2 - Featuring GFGH's Eric Guindon and John Cropper
Wilmington's Homegrown Hope Part 3 - Featuring GFGH's Dessie Buchanan
Wilmington's Homegrown Hope Part 4
Wilmington's Homegrown Hope Part 5

Abandoned planters turned productive gardens

Monday morning's dreary weather was no match for our volunteers from Timbertech. 16 enthusiastic volunteers arrived at 8:30 Monday to landscape, plant vegetables, mulch, and give some much needed Tender Loving Care to the beds both directly in front of Sugartree Ministries at 180 E Main Street as well as the five raised beds across the street owned by Verizon.

The day began with a tour of Sugartree Ministry and an explanation of the Grow Food Grow Hope program and the vision of Jessica Braun, our Food Distribution Coordinator, who created the plan for the Ministry's garden project.

"I want this garden to be educational as well as provide fresh vegetables. We have so many people who come into the ministry with health problems: obesity and diabetes; and being able to provide them and educate them on how to eat and grow their own healthy food could save their lives. They're going to come into the ministry tonight and see this garden they've planted and this will be Day 1 for them. And they will see what it looks like in a day, a week, a month, and see that with a little love and a little effort you can grow your own food and maybe next year they'll be our next group of community garden or backyard garden families and we'll be able to educate them even better."

With an understanding of what they were working for the volunteers got started despite the wet weather. Using the Square Foot Gardening method they planted square-by-square in the planters, which Verizon has generously allowed us to use this season, filling them with combinations of tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, onions, and as many vegetables as could be grown in the small space.

The volunteers made short work of the gardens as well as the landscaped beds adjacent to the building. We were ecstatic to have such a strong turnout despite the weather, and we're ready to watch these gardens grow.

Backyard garden planting almost complete

Despite the rainy weather this week, we're finishing up the last few plantings for our backyard garden project, which has taken us into the backyards of families across Clinton County. We've been thrilled with the response from the families, and their excitement is obvious even in these early days of the growing season.

Probably the most exciting aspect of this new project is the level of involvement for the children of our families. Across the board, they're curious, inquisitive and eager to get their hands dirty. That is unquestionably the best way to build healthy eating habits: by starting early, and by engaging the kids with fun and practical learning techniques.

After this week, almost all of our garden sites will be planted and ready to grow. Yesterday, we had an amazing group of volunteers from a local business help plant a new garden site at Sugartree Ministries, which Jessica will be posting about later this morning. The season carries on, and the plants are starting to grow.

Guest Chef Teaches Culinary Class

Today's post comes from Food Distribution Coordinator Jessica Braun

Mike Huffer of Wittenburg University taught the second week of the Culinary Job Training Class at Sugartree Ministries on Tuesday, May 11th.  Mike is Wittenberg's Executive Chef and started with Sodexo approximately three years ago after working at the University of Notre Dame's food service.  He brought a great deal of energy to the class while teaching the ins and outs of recipe quantification, product ID (knowing what a product is and what it should look like when it arrives to the kitchen), and menu planning.  Throughout the class, the students discussed everything from how to plan a menu, how to break down and multiply recipes, to how to delegate the responsibilities when planning a menu and catering an event.

Students practiced recipe quantification -and their math skills- by converting measurements from cups to quarts to gallons and back again.  They also reviewed halving and multiplying recipes, which answered questions such as, "how many cups are needed if you halve this recipe?" or "how many cups are needed to quadruple this recipe?"

Chef Mike Huffer discusses meal planning with students

Chef Mike closed the class by asking the students to plan their own meals.  Each student had to present what they would cook, what they would need to make this meal and what ingredients they usually have on hand vs what ingredients needed from the store.  Additionally, they had to present the order in which they needed to prepare things.  The students explored questions such as, "do you cook the meat or vegetables first?"  "Do you need to marinate something overnight?" They also addressed issues such as, "What will take the most of your preparation time?"  and "How does the recipe/preparation change if you're cooking for 5,000 people vs only your family?"

The Culinary Job Training class will continue through July with a Mystery Basket Final where guest judges will evaluate the students' abilities to improvise a dish with provided ingredients.

Next farmers market May 15th

The "Winter" Farmers' Market will be making one final appearance in our temporary new location before making its final stop for the Summer season. 

You can find your favorite vendors and all of their delicious local products at WILMINGTON COLLEGE on Saturday, May 15th  from 9:00 am - 12:00 pm. 

We will be in the parking lot between Kettering Hall and Boyd Auditorium, right off of College Street across from the Douglas Street intersection. Need directions - check out the map here!

Stock up for Spring with amazing homemade breads and fresh meats, get rid of dry Winter skin with all natural-skin care, treat yourself with delicious chocolates and cookies, and spice up your life with fresh herbs!

Community Garden officially opens: photos and video

We held our first official community garden night last night, marking the beginning of our gardening season. Families came together to meet their garden mentors, to see their garden beds, and to plant lettuce, spinach, onions, beets and broccoli. The beds already had sage and oregano growing from earlier in the season, so we harvested some of each for two different recipes that we prepared on site: lemon sage dip and herb & lemon goat cheese spread.

While the families tended to their new garden beds, many of the kids joined Mariah, our Youth Outreach Coordinator, to make garden journals which they'll use to keep track of their family's progress.

Here is a video from our first official garden night last night. (Click on the video to view larger.)



We're excited to officially begin the gardening season. We're still planting at a number of our sites around the county, so stay tuned for updates on those.

Culinary Job Training program begins

Today's post comes from Food Distribution Coordinator Jessica Braun

Chef Tom Tiner introduces the Culinary Job Training Class.

"This is not a Martha Stewart cooking class," says Sodexo Executive Chef Tom Tiner as he opens the first day of the 11-week Culinary Job Training Class.  He continues, explaining to eight attentive students, that this class is not for those who enjoy cooking but for those who want cooking to be their lives and livelihoods.  

This 11-week certificate course is truly a crash course in everything culinary from the basics of safety and sanitiation to a mystery basket day where students will be given a basket of ingredients and must create a dish from them to be judged as their final project.  

The eight students were selected from a pool of over twenty applicants and all have dreams of either opening their own restaurants, catering businesses, or becoming Head or Sous Chefs at restaurants.  "Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity" says Jean Stroman whose words were echoed by all of the chosen students whose previous culinary experiences range from chef classes in Virginia to simply cooking for their families.  

Students listen attentively to industry safety and sanitation standards.

In Tuesday's information packed class Chef Tom explained the safety and sanitation standards of the culinary industry and how to keep food safe.  A demonstration on how to calibrate a food thermometer with ice water showed how the simplest things can help take care of one of food safety's most important tools.  Chef Tom provided booklets brimming with temperature charts and industry standards while students asked questions about the differences between the restaurant and food service industries.  Chef Tom, with over 24 years of experience as a Chef told stories of restaurants he'd worked in the past and how things had changed.

"The standards are always changing.  When I was in Culinary School they were still teaching the old standards, everything just changed this year and now we have to teach ourselves what the new standards are and make sure that we're keeping up with them.  A lot of our job is knowing rules and regulations and making sure that our kitchens adhere to them....I've had a health inspection where we got a 99.5%, we were docked .5% because I didn't have a hat on while I gave the inspector a tour."

 After four hours of heating and cooling standards, cleanser, latex clothes and food borne pathogen discussions the students were overwhelmed with information.  However, at the end of the day a tour of Sugartree Ministries' new Rachael Ray kitchen and the distribution of chef's coat and hat for each left the students breathless and excited to start cooking.

Community Garden expansion, in hours and in beds

Our community garden is growing, in more ways than one.

We continued last week the process of building and filling 20 new beds at the garden, which opens for the season on Tuesday night during our first community garden night. We'll be planting some transplants, talking about the upcoming season and getting to know our new garden families.

To accommodate the different schedules of our garden participants and their families, we're extending our weekly get-togethers to Saturday morning, from 9 to 10 a.m., as well as on Tuesday nights from 7 to 8 p.m. Obviously, any of the garden participants are welcome to come plant, weed and harvest in their beds whenever they like, but we've found that scheduling a common time to come together really helps build a sense of community at the garden.

The public is more than welcome to come to any of our garden nights, so stop by and say hello tomorrow night or Tuesday morning.

Below are some photos from the expansion on Thursday.