Minutes from August 16^th Community Food and Garden Network meeting

What a wonderful meeting we had!  It was hosted by Al Klein who lives on the north side and has started an herb garden in his backyard.  The herb garden was started after Al attended the spring conference and consists of two beautiful pots overflowing with Rosemary, Basil, and Chives.  Al would like to expand the garden in the future to include the colors of the Waunakee High School. 

• Upcoming Bees Without Borders Conference –The time and place for this conference is November 11^th at the Oak Song Waldorf School in McFarland.  The name comes from a bee cooperative in Mexico and the woman working on the cooperative will lead a workshop on building a hive and talk about how this project has helped their community.  The conference is also planned to feature Madison’s international gardening community as well as highlight the cooperative projects happening here such as Bayview Foundations/Triangle Neighborhood gardening project.  The conference will also be offering classes for gardening in the schools, and community garden projects for people with disabilities.  We may have to extend the conference to another day Dec. 9^th if we can’t fit all of the information into one day.  We will be having a planning meeting soon.
• September 11^th Community Wide food donation day-  The Community Food and Garden Network in cooperation with the Community Garden Division and Foods Division at CAC are organizing a community wide food donation day for September 11^th.  All of the donated food will go to area food pantries.  Help is needed to talk to individual gardeners and publicize the event.
• Food For Thought Festival-  CFGN can have information available at the CAC table.  It would also be a great time to have some demonstration of the garden projects the network works with.
• Rotating CFGN postitions/ getting more involvement in meetings-  VISTAs will only be around for another year to facilitate CFGN.  Now is a good time to set up a model for participants handling the meetings.  The rotating host is going well and participants also need to take responsibility for taking the minutes, facilitating the meetings, and organizing the meetings.  This should also increase involvement in the network and member buy-in. 
• CFGN directory- The directory is coming along very well thanks to the help from Sandy Miller.  We still need people to submit information about their project as well as recipes, activities, pictures and stories.  The directory will be available as a Microsoft Word Document.
• Wisconsin Department of Public Health-Garden toolkits-  Amy Meinen from the Wisconsin Department of Public Health talked about her program which aims to decrease obesity by increasing the amounts of fruits and vegetables eaten daily.  She plans to create a garden toolkit for schools to use.

The next meeting will be held on Sept. 13^th at Catherine Boldt’s house.

The October 11^th meeting will be hosted by David Ballman at WI Council for the Blind.

In Attendance

Al Klein                                    Host and Home Gardener

Lisa Johnson                             UW Extension-Master Gardener Program         johnson.lisa@...

Ginger Gansor                          United Cerebral Palsy                                       gingerg@...

Steve Andrews             CAC Americorps VISTA                                 stevea@...

Paul Bittorf                               Pathways of WI                                                paul_bittorf@...

David Ballman              WI Council for the Blind                                   dave@...

Amy Meinen                             WI Department of Public Health                       meineam@...

Rick Brooks                             UW Extension-Health Promotion Project          rbrooks@...

Dottie Klein                              Al’s mom and avid gardener

Allison C. Else              Lutheran Social Services                                   aelse@...

Ashleigh Ross                           CAC Americorps VISTA                                 growedibleflowers@...