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The Cliffs Park Community
Garden
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Westcliffe
Community Garden News 2011
Posted Aug 21 2011
Dear Fellow Gardeners,
We've set a few dates to come together at the
Cliffs' Park Community Garden to celebrate a
bountiful season.
We'll have two work days this coming week:
Tuesday August 23rd from 4:30-6:30pm
and Friday August 26 from 10-11:30am
Work gloves, shovels and extra wheelbarrows are
always helpful.
On Thursday September first from
5:30-7:30pm we'll host a harvest
celebration and open house. The first hour we
can plan to mingle and admire our garden and
then those who wish to stay for a meal can join
in a potluck dinner. Please bring a dish to
share, a plate, fork and napkin, a lawn chair or
blanket, and a refreshment.
Hope to see you there!
Posted June 18 2011 Greetings Fellow Gardeners,
A Happy Spring Weekend to you, and Happy
Fathers Day to all the fathers out there!
We are ready to put up the High Tunnel! We have
received some very generous contributions from the
community: Brad Hartbauer came over with his auger
and drilled 8 holes for the anchors, Greenleaf
Forestry donated the beams for the foundation, and
Kim & Tyler Stein of In the Now, For the Future have
gathered and prepared the materials to anchor this
high tunnel so well that we won't have to worry
about the Westcliffe winds blowing it away.
We'll get started at 10:30 am this Sunday June
19. The more the merrier. Please bring work gloves
and shovels.
-- The Cliffs Park: A
Community Garden c/o Sustainable Ways, Inc. PO
Box 672 Westcliffe, CO 81252
Posted April 27, 2011: Dear Fellow Gardeners,
We have a lot of exciting plans underway
to enhance the Community Garden as we enter our
second growing season. We would love your help in
making them happen!
At the top of the list is
our new high tunnel, a large hoop house made of
greenhouse plastic and steel tubing that will act
much like a traditional green house, extending the
growing season at the garden by about a month at
each end of the season. Sustainable Ways Inc.
recently purchased this high tunnel for the
community garden through a cost-share program with
the Natural Resources Conservation Service. You can
see a picture and more info about the high tunnel on
the Farmtek
website:
In order to learn more about
high tunnels, and come up with some plans for how to
use ours, we will be gathering to watch an
informational webinar at the Library Community Room
next Thursday May 5 at 5pm. After we watch the short
introductory webinar we can come up with a plan for
our own high tunnel. If you aren't able to come next
Thursday, or want to watch the webinar on your own
ahead of time you can find it at
Website: . Look for "Recorded Webinars" on the
right column.
On May 7 Sustainable Ways will
hold the second of a two part Permaculture workshop
focused on finalizing a comprehensive design for the
community garden using principles borrowed from
nature. If you would like to register for this
workshop please contact Sue Pitman at 371-3685.
Finally, we will be planting our new fruit tree
orchard, brought to the community garden through a
grant from the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation and
Dryers Fruit Bars on Wednesday May 11th beginning at
11am. We hope to recruit a large number of
volunteers for this event. Please plan to come ready
to work with gloves, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow if
you have one. And bring along a friend or two if you
can!
If you are interested in working in the
Commons Area this year, please respond to this email
or call Buffy Lenth at 783-4833 so that you can be
included in upcoming planning for this season. We
will be looking for a weekly time work together in
the garden, and setting up a watering schedule so
that we can all share the responsibilities.
As always, if you would like to sign up for a free
individual plot please contact Buffy Lenth at
783-4833.
Plans for Westcliffe's Seed Lending
Library are moving forward! If you'd like to get
involved please join us this Friday April 29th from
1:00-2:30pm in the courthouse basement. For more
information visit
website.
Thanks! Looking forward to
seeing you all soon!
The Cliffs Park: A
Community Garden c/o Sustainable Ways, Inc. PO
Box 672 Westcliffe, CO 81252
Dear Fellow Gardeners,
March 25, 26th and May 7 2011 You all
asked for Permaculture Training that is on weekends
and doesn't cost so much when we offered a full 2
week Permaculture Design Certificate Course in
Westcliffe last summer. So here it is!
Thanks to a grant to CusterHealth! from the Colorado
Health Foundation we are offering a Free
Permaculture Workshop (Part 1) on Saturday, March
26, 9-4 and Part 2 on Saturday May 7, 9-4.
Pre-registration required for both. In addition,
there will be a free Introduction to Permaculture
presentation on Friday evening, March 25, 6-7:30 at
Cliff Lanes. These programs are part of Sustainable
Ways' effort to develop a local food supply and
CusterHealth! effort to get people outdoors
exercising, working with others, and eating
healthful foods.
The Introduction to
Permaculture presentation is suggested for the
participants in the Saturday Workshops and for
anyone else who wants to know what Permaculture is
all about. (a brief description of Permaculture is
using OBSERVATION & COMMON SENSE FOLLOWING THE
PATTERNS OF NATURE to provide for human needs in
abundance without harming the earth.)
Permaculture Workshop Part 1 on Saturday, March 26
will teach the Permaculture Design process by
assisting in creating and updated design of Cliffs'
Park Community Garden to accommodate community
needs, lessons from 2010, and a fruit tree
orchard/forest garden to be planted May 11. Learning
this process will assist you in designing your own
garden using Permaculture Principles for maximum
long term productivity. This is your opportunity to
participate in planning for the community garden,
important if you have or want a plot, want to help
with the Common's garden, or just want a pleasant
place to walk and will constitute the first
community garden meeting of 2011.
Permaculture Workshop Part 2 on Saturday, March 26
will build on the March 26th workshop including
finalizing the updated design of Cliffs' Park
Community Garden and teach how to implement the
design of your own garden using Permaculture
Principles for maximum long term productivity with
minimal use of water. It will include hands-on
preparation of the community garden for fruit tree
planting and site improvements to minimize the use
of water.
TO PRE-REGISTER reply to this email
giving your name, phone, mailing address, and email
address or contact Sue Pitman at 371-3685
(sue.pitman@gmail.com)
Instructors are Becky
Elder and Sandy Cruz,. (Becky will do the Friday
evening Introduction to Permaculture.)
Sandy
Cruz has been working towards greater
sustainability, including food production and
preservation, at 9,200 feet for over three decades,
experimenting with plants and refining strategies
for living in extremely harsh conditions. She holds
a Diploma of Permaculture Design from the
International Permaculture Institute and founded
High Altitude Permaculture in 1992. Sandy teaches
diverse permaculture courses, consults on site
planning and design, and has trained fifty new
Permaculture teachers from around the country. Sandy
recently relocated to Salida, where she is
establishing a new permaculture research and
demonsration site.
Becky Elder has been
gardening on the Colorado Front Range for thirty
five years. Certified in permaculture design, 2002,
and holding several certificates, Becky works with
Pikes Peak Permaculture, High Altitude Permaculture,
Sustainable Ways, and Transition Town Manitou
Springs. She is a board member with Peak to Plains
(agricultural) Alliance and the Green Cities
Coalition. An active Master Gardener for Colorado
State University, she teaches in the Gardening in
the Pikes Peak Region series. Becky is an
Environmental Consultant (2010.) A life-long organic
gardener, Becky owns Blue Planet Earthscapes, an
award winning, gardening company. A former wildlife
rehabilitator, her Manitou home gardens are
Certified Wildlife Habitat and were included in the
Audubon Society's book: Colorado Wildscapes. Her
first book, Raven in the Garden, a Front Range
Gardener's Journal was published in 2007.
Sandy Cruz has been working toward greater
sustainablity, including food production and
preservation, at 9,200 feet for over three decades,
experimenting with plants and refining strategies
for living in extremely harsh conditions.
Sustainable Ways is a 50l(c)(3) non-profit
organization dedicated to educating, advocating, and
demonstrating ways of sustainable living in the Wet
Mountain Valley.
Greetings! We hope this note finds you well and
enjoying the beautiful winter weather.
As the days grow longer again, we are starting
to think about the community garden and all the
plans we have for this coming season.
We have already passed on an invitation from
Penn Parmenter to today's first Seed Lending
Library kick-off meeting. This library is going
to be a great asset to our community garden,
allowing us all to collaborate in developing our
own varieties that grow well here in our
challenging climate. We encourage anyone who is
interested to come to the meeting and get
involved. Penn envisions meeting every two
weeks for a while to work on the steps necessary
to set up the seed library and to process local
seeds. A "come when you can event."
Contact Penn to get on her Seed Library
email list so you stay informed. See her
website for beautiful pictures of her garden
and a schedule for all her classes;
Penn is also organizing a Seed Swap and Potluck
for February 26, and she and Cord are
giving a free 4 hour workshop on March 5 on
Seed Saving, bringing back the new knowledge
they gained at Bill McDorman's Seed School last
fall.
We are also pleased to announce two one-day
Permaculture workshops focused on the community
garden coming up this spring. The first, on
March 26 will introduce permaculture
principles and how we can use them in designing
new aspects of the garden, such as the fruit
tree orchard. The second workshop on May 7
will introduce new topics such as wise use of
water. Please save the dates! To make the most
out of these workshops we would like you to help
gather some community input from various
stakeholder groups about how the garden can best
enhance our community.
Planting of the
fruit trees from the Fruit Tree Planting
Foundation Grant (that you all voted for over
the internet last summer) is scheduled for
Wednesday, May 11. Please save the date
for a 2 hour class on fruit tree planting and
care and to help plant the trees. (We promised
in the grant application that we would have 20
volunteers so we will need you all.)
Other goals include improving our primitive
irrigation system (with drip irrigation for
the fruit trees and better delivery to the
plots) and securing funding for a green
house or hoop house at the community
garden.
In anticipation of these projects and other
suggestions for improvement of the garden, we
would like to recruit an advisory committee for
the garden that could help move these efforts
forward. Please let us know if you might be
interested.
We hope to see you at some of the great
events coming up soon!
Buffy 783-4833 and Sue 371-3685
The Cliffs Park: A Community Garden c/o Sustainable
Ways, Inc. PO Box 672 Westcliffe, CO 81252
The Cliff’s Park:
A
Community Garden Wish List
(as of March 9,
2010)
Water Cistern (s) Temporary shed on
skids to store hoses and equipment Fencing for garden plot
area
2 pedestrian gates 1 large gate for
trucks and farm equipment 695 feet of fencing 6 ft tall (hog,
goat, or Chicken) Post extensions for existing fencing to
bring to 8ft tall or more (for 708 ft. Fence posts for 6-8 ft
fence (Distance including gates approx. 200 ft.) Top soil
(clean) Manure (separate fresh manure from year or more old
manure) Straw bales, rotted hay bales (separate seed free
hay from regular), loose rotted hay or straw Compostable
waste vegetable matter that won’t blow away or attract critters
(herbicide and pesticide free grass clippings, used coffee
grounds, etc.) Wood chips for paths Old carpet (5 ft or 2
½ foot widths) to use for weed suppression under paths (turned
upside down.) Seeds for cover crops Stakes and twine for
marking individual plots Hoses, hosebibs, water pipes,
hardware to attach pipe to cistern and /or connect multiple
cisterns Large worm box (instructions to make it available) Children’s garden raised bed, fence, and gate. Short pieces
of rebar to stake haybales Picnic Table Old windows for
cold frames Old window screens for hail protection Pallets Seed for grassland restoration (Jim Sperry to specify) Burlap
or other biodegradable woven material to aid
in grass establishment on steep slopes
Contact
information: Garden Plot reservations: (no charge – volunteer
hours required): Buffy 783-4833 Donations: Robin 783-2481 Volunteers: Kim 783-0760
General questions: Sue 371-3685
Plot reservations, Donations and Volunteer offers can be
made by email
email
Labor, preferably with
mechanical or animal assistance to:
Spread manure
Disk in manure and plow to break up sod and
prepare soil for planting
Trucks to pick up and deliver manure and haybales
Cash
donations for water, payment in lieu of taxes, cistern,
liability insurance, etc.
Tax deductible donations may be sent to Sustainable Ways,
PO Box 672, Westcliffe, CO 81252, specifying that they be
applied to the Community Garden.
Donations can be offered via
email or by telephone to Robin Young at
the NRCS office 783-2481
Note: All donations need to be coordinated
through a task force (for delivery and placement instructions)
and carefully documented.
This will allow us to claim donations as local matching
for potential future grant applications.
Records need to be kept of # hours of donated labor for
the same purpose.
Garden Steering Committee:
Sue Pitman 371-3685 (for Sustainable Ways), Bob Tobin
783-3229, Steve Willman (for Custer 2020) 429-1608, Mike Liebman
371-0059, Buffy Lenth 783-4483
December 11th 2009 Community Garden On Friday,
December 11 anyone who is interested in pursuing the establishment
of a Community Garden in Westcliffe/Silver Cliff is invited to meet
with Melissa Marts from Care and Share (Colorado Springs), beginning
at Candy's Coffee Shop at 10:30 AM . Melissa runs the Care and
Share Food Bank Community Gardens and has a Permaculture Design
Certificate. She will tell us about what she has learned with their
garden and help us assess the site that Steve Willman has offered to
write a grant for as part of a collaborative community effort.
Check your email for updates and potential scheduling changes.
At the November Sustainable Ways Transition Town
Movie Night, Steve Willman asked for help to cost out a potential
one and one half acre community garden down the street across from
Vali and next to the High School stadium for inclusion in a grant
request he is putting together. As I remember what he said, this
grant would be asking for funds for a sidewalk between Vali, Club
America, and this site next to the High School as well as a
community garden and some light outdoor recreation at Club America
designed for the elderly (which can be used by Vali residents.)
Steve wants the site assessed by people who know about growing
to figure out what would be needed and, once he has a list, will do
the cost estimates and write the grant request. PLEASE LET ME KNOW
IF YOU CAN HELP WITH THIS.
I have asked Melissa Mart from
Care and Share (Food Bank) in Colorado Springs to help us with this.
She operates a large garden at Share and Care which grows food for
the Food Insecure to supplement the Food Bank's offerings. Melissa
has agreed to come to Westcliffe to assist us in this matter. She
will let me know when she can come to Westcliffe to do so.
I
WILL SCHEDULE A SITE VISIT AND MEETING with Melissa (to pick her
brain) when Melissa lets me know she can come to Westcliffe. PLEASE
LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO BE INCLUDED so I can let you know when
this meeting comes to pass.
I look forward to assembling the
contact information of people interested in increasing our local
food supply through growing our own food in a variety of venues.
Many thanks, Sue Pitman 371-3685
email
Water Information
Getting water to the Community Garden has been a challenge that has
finally come together, at least for the short term. We will be
using the hosebib at the school next to the maintenance building at
the stadium. Hopefully this weekend we will have a garden hose with
an attached water meter that will bring the water to the South West
corner of the garden. Instructions on how to operate the system
will be provided to plot holders, along with a request for donations
to reimburse the school district for the water used.
Sustainable Ways will continue to seek tax deductible donations for
a more permanent solution, should it become necessary. Any
donations for the Community Garden will be deposited in a separate
bank account and used exclusively for the garden.
Many thanks
to Lance Villers, the school superintendent, for approving our
request to use the school hosebib.
Many thanks also to all
those who have diligently pursued the various potential ways to get
water to the garden, including Jerry Lacy and the High Altitude
Garden Club, and especially to Custer County Road and Bridge (and
Custer County Commissioners) for their positive response to our
request to deliver water to a cistern at the garden and the Fire
Department for the donation of a firehose to deliver water from a
fire hydrant to the proposed cistern when we were considering that
option. At this point a cistern has not materialized. Using the
school hosebib has become available and is a more economical and
logical source for water.
I look forward to seeing as many of
you as possible on Sunday for the Parmenter's free garden planting
demo and Q&A session at 1pm and the Garden workday that follows.
(Accepting fencing donations and working on the fence is the
primary, but not the only, garden activity for this work day.)
Individual plots and The Commons are now available for plot
holders and volunteers to garden. (Do note that we still are having
frosts so it is too early to plant anything that is not frost
tolerant or protected.) Call Buffy Lenth 783-4833 if you want to
reserve a free plot and/or be assigned a specific one - or want to
volunteer to work on The Commons. Check out the plots that have
already begun work. Buffy and Ben have been hard at work on double
digging beds in The Commons. Annie and Jan have double dug their
plot. The Gearharts have also double dug theirs and I have
completed a small sheet mulching demonstration bed in my plot. (The
sheet mulching approach is an alternative method that works
especially well in places where there is no soil - which is not the
case at Cliffs' Park Community Garden. We will see if it is useful
in our situation as well.)
Sue 371-3685
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