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The summer is coming to a close and so is the NICE. However sad, the NICE was truly an inspiring and successful experience. Since leaving the Sunnyside community, many exciting developments have manifested. First, the SunNE working group is still working together and have officially started a non-profit! Great job SunNE group! Also, after negotiating with the city of Portland, the city has committed to funding 25% of the much needed feasibility study for the SunNE project. This will be instrumental when asking for other grants to push the SunNE to the next stage of development. Thank you Portland! Not only is the SunNE moving forward, but the Institute for Community Energy (ICE) is also picking up steam! After dozens of hours of writing and editing, the ICE Workbook is finished! The ICE Workbook is designed to be a walk-through for any student that wants to start his or her own ICE, or get involved with an already existing one. Students all over the country in ten different states are already working to get ICEs in their communities, so next summer is going to be even more exciting! Please give it a read and use it to make change in your community! http://www.focusthenation.org/doc/nice_workbook.pdf We are in a time of great change and whether that change is one of opportunity and prosperity or disaster and despair, we still can’t tell. However, we can make a choice! It is time to stand together for solutions to transition to a sustainable, just, and prosperous future. Jesse Hough NICE Coordinator 503-438-0738 thenicejesse@gmail.com Youth News Each class spent last week planting the first of our eight main planter beds! Youth had fun mixing the components, filling the beds and planting their first vegetable starts. We used a lightweight soil mix recommended by American Soil. We modified their recommendation slightly, the blend we are using is as follows: 50% pumice Last week, all of the 3rd-5th graders, about 35 kids, had the opportunity to take a Field Trip to the Civic Center Victory Garden. They learned about the different vegetables and herbs in the garden and had the opportunity to taste broccoli and bush beans! The boys got a thrill from pulling weeds out of the garden. Construction and Volunteer News The week was spent preparing materials for the rest of the planter beds. We finished sanding, staining and nailing together the exterior wooden panels. The eighth bed is missing some components which we will gather and assemble this week. We also began assembling the worm bin! In addition, we took footage detailing the planter bed design, which we hope will be ready for viewing at the beginning of September. We are looking for advice/recommendations for a main shade structure to cover a 12′ x 12′ space. We were thinking a metal shade structure would be appropriate, but upon further consideration it would be both costly and heavy. We are now considering bamboo, but worry about the longevity of the structure in the harsh exterior conditions. If we do go ahead with a bamboo shade structure we are looking for a local bamboo source, and someone willing to offer technical advice/design ideas. We would like to be able to shade the space on hot days, but remove the shade cover in regular conditions to maximize sun exposure for the rest of the garden. Mural News The mural design is moving forward, many thanks to Jessica Kraft and Six Degrees of Sustainability for their hard work and creative talents! The panels depict the full cycle of the local food system and each panel will become part of a 45 minute curriculum. Allysa and Pete, the youth creative arts teachers at Glide were also present and gave excellent feedback on how Glide youth can take part in this endeavor. We will be presenting the second draft of the mural in two weeks and will be having mural work days come September! If you would like to get involved or have questions please contact: Maya Donelson Graze the Roof Project Organizer maya [dot] donelson [at] gmail.com www.glide.org www.baylocalize.org Hello! The Sunnyside Community Energy Festival beamed brightly this past Friday with a wonderful turn out of over a hundred and fifty community member who came out to learn more about the SunNE Project. Many of the community members signed up to be in the SunNE working group, or help out in some other way. With the formation of a SunNE working group, the SunNE will be able to keep moving forward after the NICE leaves. We excpect many excited, dedicated, and knowledgable community members on the SunNE working group. We gave out day old bagels and used a bio-diesel powered generator and this helped make the Sunnyside Community Energy Festival a sustainable event! SEE more details of the event and the NICE here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29366960@N04/?saved=1 In other efforts from the NICE, we are nearing the release of the ICE Workbook! This first-of-its kind workbook will walk college students through the process of getting a Student Summer Job for themselves as well as moving a clean, renewable, and community supported project forward. We are doing some final edits before we start spreading it all over the place! Come back soon to get the ICE Workbook for yourself soon! We hope to have Institutes for Community Energy all over the country next year! Its time for students to take an active role in creating a sustainable, just and prosperious future for all. Check back soon for the final ICE Workbook! Jesse Hough NICE Program Coordinator 503-438-0738 thenicejesse@gmail.com Project Slingshot News Richard is back! Check out his post below. Youth News Last week, students learned how to brew worm tea using molasses, worm castings, soybean protein and air. Then they began an experiment attempting to grow lettuce without soil, using stones from the roof and worm tea for nutrients. I am curious to see how this experiment fares! After many weeks of contemplation, design and hard work we have nearly finished two planter beds and the others are well on their way! They are elegant, resourceful, and affordable and the design lends itself well to reproducibility. The basic unit for the planter beds is the 12″ x 12″ milk crate. The design originated with our first compost run to American Soil in Richmond, CA when we lined the bed of the truck with these simple storage units. We then lined each crate with a trash bag and dumped compost on top. This method made it easier to move the compost and carry it up stairs as the elevator stops one flight shy of the roof; typical of most existing buildings. After transport, we were left with an abundance of milk crates which began taking on a new form as 2′x4′ raised planter beds. The milk crates sit on reused metro racks and are covered with an exterior wooden frame made from recycled shipping pallet lumber. Each bed lined with a nonwoven filter fabric and is strategically designed to drain excess water to the center and collect all runoff via a suspended gutter to close the system and minimize rainwater runoff. Volunteer News We have our first dedicated Tenderloin residents helping with the garden build out! The first is Mauricio, who on numerous occasions has lent a helping hand as I traipsed through the lobby with materials and equipment. This past Saturday Mauricio joined right in on our volunteer workday and he was back for more on Monday. The second tenderloin resident is Duke, who was enticed to the roof by a volunteer. He also spent last Saturday working with us on the roof and was back for more sanding, nailing and staining on Tuesday. Thus far 70 people have come out to work days! Wow. The support and interest has been incredible, especially since most news of the project travels primarily by word of mouth. Glide staff members are also getting more and more curious about the rooftop garden and new faces are starting to make their appearance to check out the progress. It helps now that Glide went wireless and I can access the Internet from the roof. I can’t imagine a better office. Mural News Jessica Kraft and Six Degrees of Sustainability will be presenting the first draft for the rooftop mural to Glide on Friday! It is beautiful. Insect News To follow up, the white powder that can be used on aphids is called Diatomaceous Earth. I am sure this all-natural product will come in handy. It can be used on aphids and it can also be used on our new black flea beetles that we found chilling on our chard. We better hurry up and diversify our garden to attract beneficial insects. You can find more information on the substance at http://www.ghorganics.com/DiatomaceousEarth.html. Cheery Insect News If you would like to get involved or have questions please contact: Maya Donelson Graze the Roof Project Organizer maya [dot] donelson [at] gmail.com www.glide.org www.baylocalize.org This summer has certainly been an interesting one. We have seen the first black nominee for president from a major party, an enormous shift in public attitudes over oil and the economy, floods of epic proportion, and virtually the entire political establishment of Alaska indicted for corruption. On a more movement level, we have seen the Energy Action Coalition launch its first major political campaign, Power Vote, have welcomed new initiatives like the Summer of Solutions and the awesome projects at Graze the Roof and NICE. Personally, it has been a summer of trials, one that has been incredibly difficult. My father passed this summer and it was simply devastating. I admired my father more than anybody else on this earth and he taught me my love of nature, dedication to humanity and freedom, and that you need practice and dedication to achieve your desires. As a family we finally revealed to the world some of our secrets, such as my father’s role as “Mr. X” or Reagan’s real position towards the Soviet Union. Other trials were more trivial, but perhaps more related to the issues at hand. The house I grew up in was surrounded by majestic trees and beautiful flowers. This year, our trees started dying and dropping limbs on our house. The tree caretakers said that our trees were dying from the rapid climactic shifts and we had to remove them. Likewise, the massive rainstorms we have seen this summer repeatedly flooded out the house, even after repeated repair efforts. It is eerie to see the first hints of climate change coming home to impact our lives. Aphids are the first creatures to inhabit our rooftop in large numbers and boy do they love our lettuce! Yet, we are not letting these little creatures get us down. Instead we have placed our lettuce in quarantine on the far side of the roof and Glide Youth used our little infestation as a fun learning tool. Kids learned about different types of pests, beneficial insects, the dangers of pesticide use and safe pest remedies. Youth captured aphids by hand, got a closer look through a magnifying glass, mixed a basil, soapy tea from the ‘Critter Control Cookbook’ and used the tincture on our lettuce. Youth left the garden feeling accomplished. At the end of the 3rd through 5th grade class one student, Eduardo came up to me and said, “Miss Maya, I caught 21 aphids!” Hooray for Eduardo. Although an enjoyable classroom experience, our natural remedy not working its magic. We will continue to look for better environmental controls and/or preventative methods. Three possible solutions have surfaced including the use of worm tea and neam oil, which can also be used to help plants resist aphid infestation and just yesterday I learned of an all-natural white powder which can be used. I have to follow up and get more information about this powder. Even so, next week we will harvest the lettuce, the rooftop garden’s first crop and have a salad feast! Then we will replant the Earthboxes and start with a clean slate! In garden building news, we continue to move forward. Last week, we decided to experiment with an environmental, VOC free, exterior stain called MonoCoat for the wooden shell of our planter boxes and decking. Smaller is better…right? One liter is meant to cover 400 square feet, enough for all the exterior wood planter box shells and 12 square feet of decking. Although very expensive, I decided to trust in the power of this little can however our shipping pallet wood, although sanded, proved to porous to reach the predicted coverage. Now we are a little over ½ done and $130 in the hole! Ouch…and we have to buy another can to finish the job. As I was explaining our predicament to Francis, one of the rooftop garden volunteers, he reminded me that there are a lot of products on the market which we don’t pay the true environmental costs. Therefore, what seems outrageous might be accurate when the environment is taken into consideration. This is just one more example of the many learning experiences on our rooftop gardening journey! If you would like to get involved or have questions please contact: Maya Donelson Graze the Roof Project Organizer maya [dot] donelson [at] gmail.com www.glide.org www.baylocalize.org As we near the end of the Northwest Institute for Community Energy, everything is coming together as good or better than we expected! Our recent “Think Tank” was our largest yet with twenty-five people contributing! We discussed the various technological roadblocks for the SunNE and how we can overcome them. Our neighborhood survey will help answer many of the questions about the SunNE and that effort is excelling as well. Our goal of a hundred surveys is going to be easily achieved at our next “Do Tank” and that information is going to be compiled to make a strong SunNE Report. The I.C.E. Workbook is coming along nicely as well. We have a detailed outline finished and are plugging away at a rough draft. We will have a rough draft completed by next Tuesday’s “Think Tank” so all participants can give their input to improve the workbook. It’s extremely exciting to think that multiple Institutes for Community Energy could happen all over the country next year. We hope this workbook will empower and aid the average student to make their own green collar job next summer. We are still getting ready for the Sunnyside Community Energy Festival on Aug. 1st and we have recently confirmed multiple acts. First, we have Tom Osdoba from the Portland Office of Sustainable Development to speak on Portland’s efforts for sustainability. Next will be Jackie Dingfelder, who is a climate champion in our Oregon State legislator and she speak on her efforts on a state level. Between these speakers will be live music by local Portland artists such as Shawn Battles from Pirate Radio and El Chico y Los Gatos. Our most excting addition to the fistivities is our FUNKY HAT COMPETITION. Bring your funkiest hat and you might win a prize! Festivities start at 4:00pm in the Sunnyside Park and go until 8:00pm. Bring your family and your funky hat! Jesse Hough NICE Program Coordinator 503-438-0738 thenicejesse@gmail.com We made significant progress this past week, but we are still not quite ready to give our plants a home. Last week was spent revising the rooftop garden plan, hosting rooftop garden classes, buying the majority of the materials, tools and equipment necessary to build the worm bin, compost bin and the eight main planter beds - A lot of errand running. We also acquired more vegetable starts graciously donated by Victory Gardens and City Slicker Farms. These donations will bring the garden to life over the next few weeks! Two more work days were held this past weekend where we began assembling the planter bed frames, made out of reused metro carts and milk crates, and began preparing the planter bed shell by cutting and sanding the shipping pallet wood, getting it ready for its new life as a planter box. We will be building eight main 2’x4’ planter beds. Four of which will be designated for the Glide Youth, two for Rooftop Garden Volunteers, and two will be planted to showcase native plants and invite beneficial insects, hummingbirds, and butterflies to our garden. Stay posted for this week’s progress. It should be good! If you would like to get involved or have questions please contact: Maya Donelson Graze the Roof Project Organizer maya [dot] donelson [at] gmail.com www.glide.org www.baylocalize.org We are three weeks into the Northwest Institute for Community Energy, and there is a buzz around the Sunnyside Neighborhood about the SunNE. We have had three successful think tanks and three successful do tanks as well. Both types of events have been helpful for the SunNE project in their unique way. At our “Think Tank” last Tuesday we discussed the issue of climate justice and how the SunNE project ties into it. After everyone had their minds expanded through this conversation, we broke into two working groups. One working group refined the survey that we use in the “Do Tanks” and the other discussed the engineering possibilities and roadblocks of the SunNE. I want to send special thanks to Charlie the retired engineer for helping so much with the engineering aspect of the SunNE. Both discussions were extremely productive and will provide great information for the SunNE report. At our “Do Tank” last Wednesday, we surprisingly had a ton of fun going door to door in the Sunnyside Neighborhood. We took our newly polished survey (thanks Ann Copel!) to everyone house we could and had an amazingly positive response! We had a goal of getting fifteen surveys for the night and got more than double that! These surveys are going to be vital in the compellation of the SunNE report because they provide a ton of great information about the Sunnyside Neighborhood. We look forward to sharing our findings in the future. Planning is also getting underway for the Sunnyside Community Energy Festival on August 1st. We have multiple groups committed to being part of it and have a band committed so far. Please mark this event on your calendar, it’s going to be a ton of fun! Jesse Hough It was a pleasure to attend the first ever Rothbury Music Festival in Michigan! I had a great time being outdoors, camping, dancing, listening to live music, and speaking on a panel with other environmentally active youth involved in the climate change movement! There was a feeling a fun and environmental activism in the air. A great first-ever festival experience. After preparing for the next days class activities on my flight back to San Francisco and returning home early Monday morning, I woke up ready to introduce the 3rd -5th graders to the importance of keeping Garden Soil Healthy and turning Garbage into Gold. The children learned how only a small fraction of the earth is available for growing food through an activity titled “The Earth as an Apple”. As we divided an apple into smaller and smaller parts we were left with a tiny sliver representing land suitable for food production. This summer the youth at Glide will have the opportunity to convert urban grey space into edible green space on the roof! They also got to play with red wriggler worms and learn the importance of composting. These activities were repeated throughout the week with the other youth groups. Additionally, the teens had the opportunity to get out of the city and visit Slide Ranch in Marin County! In addition to spending time with the goats, sheep and chickens, they harvested vegetables from the organic garden and prepared potato and chard scrambled eggs. Some resisted close encounters with the animals, but they all enjoyed cooking and eating the scrumptious scrambled delight. The end of the week brought preparation for the third volunteer workday. We began gathering materials for the raised planter beds and the worm and compost bins. Although more materials still need to be acquired, we’ve made a good deal of progress. This past Saturday was our Third Volunteer Work Day. We transported materials for the worm and compost bins to the roof, set up the soil-less gardening system, practically finished deconstructing the wooden pallets, began cleaning up and filling the nail holes in the lumber, and unloaded pumice, coconut coir, and grape compost and lugged these components to the roof. In a week’s time, we met new people, created new experiences, worked collaboratively, shared knowledge, exercised our bodies and made tangible progress/change. Now, as a new week approaches, I am ever so anxious to build our planter beds and get vegetables comfortable in their new homes!! I would also like to further integrate and involve the Glide Community. If you would like to get involved or have questions please contact: Maya Donelson Graze the Roof Project Organizer maya [dot] donelson [at] gmail.com www.glide.org www.baylocalize.org |
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