FREE SEEDS FOR EDUCATORS
Educators in Chico are invited to pick up free packets of garden seeds (vegetables, herbs, flowers) for use in their classrooms, school gardens, community gardens, and other educational settings.

Yes, free. Totally free. Do you know an educator in town? Tell them to come by!

Pick up seeds at the Chico Country Day School garden (102 W. 11th Street) on Monday, February 22 or Monday, March 1 between 4:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., OR, come to the Seed Exchange at GRUB on February 28--See below!

SEED EXCHANGE FOR ALL!
The Chico Permaculture Guild and the GRUB Cooperative are hosting at Seed Exchange at the GRUB farm on Sunday, February 28 from 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. at the GRUB Farm, 1525 Dayton Rd.

Bring labeled seeds to exchange/swap. The potluck-style exchange will feature hundreds of varieties of seeds as well as educational information about getting them to grow. A limited supply of soil, pots, and envelopes will also be available. Children are welcome and encouraged to participate.

In addition, educators with a school ID card will be welcome to take seed packets from the "Teacher Boxes." These seeds are intended to be used in educational settings (i.e. not for personal use.)

Contact Stephanie (828-6390) or Francine (965‐1073) for more information.

"Join us as we celebrate seeds, local food, and genetic diversity!"

A hearty thank to Jim (new dad!) and to Magnolia Gift and Garden on East Avenue for their continued support of school gardens through generous donations of seeds and discounted plant starts. As a result of these gifts, aromatic, drought tolerant, and butterfly-attracting plants will be in bloom this spring at the base of fruit trees at Chico Country Day School, AND hundreds of seed packets from Magnolia (and OSH and Plant Barn) will soon be distributed for use in school classrooms and school gardens throughout the city.

Another reason to support Magnolia Gift and Garden: Discounts on bare-root fruit trees from now until they are gone. And when you purchase one of these trees, be sure to touch base with staff who can recommend some good plants and shrubs to plant at the base of these trees to attract pollinators, discourage aphids, and improve soil health while at the same time adding to the beauty of your yard.

The 5th installment of the CSU Chico Sustainability Conference, is now in full swing, with sessions running through Saturday November 7.

Here are a couple other items one might add to the weekend calendar:

PLANT SALE
"Butte College Environmental Horticulture Department Is Having Its Annual Fall Blowout Sale! This Friday (6th) from 9am to 5pm, and Saturday (7th) from 9am to 2pm."

JESUS CENTER GARDEN
"Hello wonderful community! GRUB is having one more workday to complete the Jesus Center garden. We need to fill in the last few raised beds with compost, set up irrigation, and get food into the ground. If you would like to help out with some or all of these events please join us. Sunday, November 8; 2:00-5:00 p.m., 14th Street and Mulberry

Okay, so maybe dishing out $1,000,000 to purchase cleaner-burning wood stoves is a bit far-fetched, but here are the requests that I would make of the biggest retailer in the known universe:

--Annual discounts to all teachers purchasing school supplies for their classes

--Discounts on any item that will be used in a school or community garden

--20% off for anyone who shows up on a bicycle or via public transportation

--"Farmer's Market Sundays": On Saturday afternoon Walmart purchases all of the remaining Saturday Farmer's Market produce from local growers and then sells it the following day at a competitive price.

--Conversely, should they expand to sell fresh produce, refuse to sell product shipped in from south of the equator (i.e. New Zealand apples in March).

--Demonstration of attractive, drought-tolerant landscaping using native plants

--Use of permeable concrete in the parking lot

--Charge 10 cents per disposable bag used, with the proceeds going towards cleanup efforts in nearby Little Chico Creek (including removal of plastic bags)

--Include a label on domestically-sourced foods that identifies county and state of origin

Many ask, why pick on Walmart? What about K-mart, Costco, etc? My answer is simply that we have to start somewhere. We have passed that threshold where it is okay for people and companies to continually take without giving back. Walmart has the resources to be a leader in this regard, and I for one applaud the Chico City Council for pushing them to do so.

I quipped with a city council member the other day about the hot button issues in Chico this year. "Every year brings it own challenges, doesn't it?" The response surprised me.

"This year is different. Chico is more polarized than I have ever seen it--Walmart, Otterson Drive, Air Quality. This has been a tough year."

I don't have the historical perspective, but certainly I will agree that on many issues Chico does appear to be, sadly, a polarized community.

Not that I believe everyone should have the same opinion on topics. Disagreement about issues is a good thing, and people should bring their diverse insights and backgrounds and passions to their opinions.

But what is sad is the apparent lack of dialogue and discourse about the issues, and the lack of desire to be become educated in all facets of the debates for the sake of being able to move conversations forward. In fact, I think we are headed in the opposite direction, in which people are opening their mouths but closing their ears, using public forums such as "Tell it to ER" and Topix.net (where folks can post online comments on news articles and letters to the editor) to take swipes and potshots at groups or individuals.

Plenty of people have told me not to take these comments seriously, but the point is that most of the folks who make these statements are quite serious.

Rather than progressing issues closer to resolution, I just see people getting angrier. When a decision is made with the loudest, angriest person winning, it seems that the issue doesn't actually resolve--anger keeps it alive like a smoldering fire, and it resurfaces over and over.

Just over a year ago, I wrote a blog entry about the fact that if your property in the city of Chico is zoned R1, then a Use Permit is required to legally keep chickens. I learned that the price tag for this permit is $1,363. I found this completely ridiculous.

On July 13 of this year I did submit a letter to the Planning Services Director of the City of Chico regarding this issue, and received a timely and polite response from Angela Spain, Assistant Planner. She wrote that "Staff will consider modifying the requirements for the keeping of fowl" as a part of the General Plan update, and that the zoning code will also be revised in coordination with this update. She also passed on that the fee for a Use Permit Application is $1,416. (Inflation? Or perhaps I misread the literature the first time around?).

At this point I could have chosen to submit my letter to the City Council in hopes that they might move forward on this most pressing issue of poultry ownership in advance of the General Plan Update, but the reality is that it is unlikely that my need to be a keeper of chickens will outpace the finalization of the General Plan document.

I chose instead to submit the following letter to be included for consideration in the General Plan Update:

On my way home from the market today, I biked past a recently-purchased home just down the street, where the new owner was using his GMC Yukon and rope to rip out 6-foot tall rose bushes and pile them onto a trailer.

I understand the problem of having excess roses--my house had 40 plants when we moved in--but my solution involved a shovel, a dozen or so 1-gallon plastic pots, and a email that I sent out to a few dozen friends advertising free roses to a good home. Having others adopt my roses probably took less time and cost less money than hauling the plants to the dump.

Anyway, watching these healthy rose bushes being so unceremoniously uprooted by an SUV, unkempt though they may have been, was heart-wrenching. I mentioned that he might want to take a break (there were about 4 left when I got there), and perhaps post them on Craigslist, but he didn't seem excited by the idea and just wanted to finish the job. With his two young children standing by I chose not to push the issue (or perhaps I should have).

HOWEVER, this front yard also has well over 100 iris plants, for which he has similar plans in the next week or so ("The lawn is going in."--I look again at his kids and held my tongue). I asked if I could save some of them, and he said to take as many as I wanted.

The problem is, I already have irises. But I am happy to dig them up for anybody that wants'm. I can't recall the color, but I know that these plants produced a nice bloom this past spring.

It is nice to plant irises near young fruit trees, as the bulbs take up excess nitrogen in the spring which can be detrimental to the trees. Irises are also very hardy and drought tolerant.

Reply to this post if you want some irises.

The rebirth of the community garden at the Dorothy F. Johnson Center at the corner of E 18th Street and Beech Street is well underway, thanks to a $3000 grant from the Rose Foundation and the dedication of a number of community members and groups.

A work party is scheduled for tomorrow morning (Saturday, May 30) from 8 am to 10 am.

The garden is presently seeking volunteer community members who are interested in maintaining a single garden plot for the benefit of all. This is an educational garden for the community, by the community--ideally, individual garden beds will have different themes, such as a culinary herb plot, areas highlighting traditional Hmong and Hispanic vegetables, and heirloom varieties of plants, including the locally developed "Bidwell's Casaba Melon." Reply to this post or contact Ben Linzmeier at 715.570.9458 for more information.

Passersby are welcome to snack on the veggies (Anyone for a sweet cherry tomato?), so long as they save some for the next person.

A special thank you to local general contractor Robin Trenda and his crew for donating the labor to install a snazzy new fence for the garden. Meeks Lumber and Hardware pitched in building supplies at a reduced cost.

Community gardens face an uphill battle here, as these plots of communally-tended veggies tend to be more amenable to high-density urban areas (think Manhattan) rather than suburban Chico.

But that doesn't necessarily mean we should give up on the concept. There are plenty of apartment complexes in Chico whose residents might be interested in having a community garden within walking distance.

Or, we can simply change the model of what a we imagine a community garden to be, as with the Dorothy F. Johnson Center.

A lot of things caught my eye over the weekend:

TWO ANGRY MOMS
Advocates for Healthy School Communities invite the public to this weekend's community viewing of the documentary “Two Angry Moms,” a film of two moms that changed their school district's food choices, integrating healthy local farm fresh options. Discussion brainstorming to follow: Meet others who are willing to ask for and create changes in the food served in Chico's public schools. 4:00 p.m. Sunday April 19th at the Chico Grange.

SPEAKING OF LOCAL FOOD, I managed to take a 30 minute detour out of a Bay Area visit this past Sunday morning to stroll around The Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in Berkeley. This garden is easily twice the size of all of the school gardens in Chico put together, and the program integrates classroom lessons, feeds into the school lunch program, and even includes a chicken coop. Some might say that this bar too high for Chico, and besides, the whole project is backed by the Chez Panisse Foundation of Berkeley, a city where, despite the economic downturn, money still flows like the gourmet olive oil used in California Cuisine (which began at the Chez Panisse restaurant). My response: That olive oil probably originated from an orchard somewhere near Chico, a community surrounded on three sides by agriculture. Our students need to know first hand where their food comes from.

I WAS ALSO IMPRESSED BY this week's edition of the News and Review, which dedicated five pages to their "Recession Survival Guide" and included a number of smart tips for saving money and accessing resources.

Lastly, THE FARMING ROUNDTABLE series continues this Wednesday, April 15th from 6:30-8:30pm at the Chico Grange. This week's topic highlights funding opportunities to protect local food production.

The Chico Grange will hold its annual Open House this coming Sunday, April 5 from 2:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

Potluck dinner is at 5:00 p.m.--bring your favorite side dish--this is a GREAT opportunity to get to know a warm and wonderful community.

I will be there along with a few GRUB folks manning the seed and plant swap table. Did you save any favorite seeds from last year? Multiple varieties of cucumber starts will be available for purchase, proceeds will go to the future Grange Children's Veggie and Garden and Berry Patch.

Live music will also be a part of the festivities, bring your own lawn chair.

For more information, check out www.chicogrange.org.