Feeds:
Posts
Comments

In order to be more inclusive to the city of Concord and the surrounding area, we have decided to change our name to the CAPITAL CITY ORGANIC GARDENERS (CCOG).

For information on our club, see our new blog at CCOGNH.WORDPRESS.COM.

Get Your Garden Started!

DIG OUT OF THE SNOW and come plan your city garden with us!

The South End Organic Garden Club is sponsoring a get-your-garden started informational event.  We will gather at Havenwood Heritage Heights on March 11th at 7pm.

Julie Steed Mawson, UNH Cooperative Extension Educator and coordinator of The N.H. Common Ground Project will introduce us to some of the delights, rewards and how-to’s of city gardening.

Gardeners and “wanna be” gardeners are invited.  There will be great discussion among gardeners of all ages and abilities. Don’t miss this great opportunity to learn more about starting your own garden. We will be offering free incentives, refreshments and raffle items!

Details…

Thursday, March 11 at 7 pm

Havenwood Heritage Heights
33 Christian Avenue
Havenwood Auditorium
For more info: laust@csd.k12.nh.us

MAP

VOTE WITH YOUR FORK!

It was heartening to see Michael Pollan featured on Oprah yesterday. He gave a short tutorial called “Food 101″ to educate Oprah’s audience about their food…where  it REALLY comes from and the true cost of consuming cheap, processed foods.  He wasn’t able to go into any real depth but I am hoping his message came across to the viewer and raised their curiosity.

He talked about the american consumer “voting” with their forks three times a day at mealtime…

“We all can vote with our forks. We get three votes a day,” Michael says. “You don’t have to get every one of them right. But if you get one of them right a day, if you vote for food that has been sustainably grown or humanely grown, whatever your values are, … you will change the food system. It’s happening now.”

If you purchase your food with some care and consideration, your voice will be heard as a powerful consumer! Choose healthy, wholesome, unprocessed foods. Try and find food that is produced locally and (ideally) organically. Grow your own food! Reject the junk foods and overly processed foods full of sugar, salt and fat. By doing so, you are voting for good food with your pocketbook and your fork! You are supporting your local economy and improving your health at the same time.

What’s not to love?

Spring is right around the corner!

Mark your calendars for our first meeting of 2010! Here are the details…

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at Wesley Methodist Church, 79 Clinton Street, Concord

Schedule:
Potluck Supper and Social Time (5:45-6:30)
Meeting/Workshop Presentation (6:45-7:45) Meeting topic TBA

Maria Noel Groves

Maria Noel Groves, Clinical Herbalist and owner of Wintergreen Botanicals, LLC, gave our club a wonderful presentation  on Great Garden Herbs: Grow Your Medicine. She gave us a good overview on growing a few herbs in our garden and how to preserve them by either drying them or making tinctures. The herbs she focused on that evening were Anise Hyssop, Holy Basil, Bee Balm, German Chamomile, Lady’s Mantle, Lemon Balm, Lemon Thyme and a variety of Mints. Planting these herbs will give you the basics for starting an herbal apothecary in your backyard!

Maria’s website is jam-packed full of useful information for anyone interested in growing and using herbs. The Herbal Education section of her website lists the classes she is teaching and offers “Learn For Free” where you can download class notes for some of the classes she teaches. Her wealth of knowledge is reflected in the clear and concise  way she presents her materials and teaches her classes.

If you are interested in growing herbs in your garden for medicine, food, tea or just for fun, Maria’s site is a good place to start!

www.wintergreenbotanicals.com

Sunapee resident, Mario Capozzoli, launched this website after reading Michael Pollan’s groundbreaking book In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto. On page 148, Pollan writes: “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

Mario remembered his great-grandparents’ gardens, an Italian homage to the old country—with ripe tomatoes reflecting the sunshine off their tight, bright skins; musty plump grapes shadowed under broad green leaves; and lemons so yellow that after holding them in his eight-year-old hands, he could smell the fragrant glories of citrus oil all day long.

Using his Great Grandmother as his launching point for inspiration, Mario built an amazing, ever growing website that brings together the Locavore (or localvore) movement, the Slow Food philosophy, the whole foods movement. He believes that when we bring together our families and communities around food, we accomplish more than the act of eating—we build community, we strengthen families, we laugh more and cry more, and we create deep within us an ability to nourish each other with our inherent sensibilities. Food—good food—paves the way!

So, pour yourself a hot beverage and spend some time exploring and being inspired by Greatgrandmother.org. Winter is here and the gardening season is over, but good, local food is available year round!

www.greatgrandmother.org

Oct potluck72

October's Potluck, once again...a super yummy dinner!

Our last potluck dinner and workshop for 2009 will be held on Wed, Nov. 18th at Wesley United Methodist Church, 79 Clinton St., Concord.  The potluck dinner starts at 5:45 pm and the workshop starts at 6:30 pm.  We’ll once again have a “harvest exchange”… bring any surplus items from your garden (or canned goods from the kitchen) to trade.

Oct exchange72

October's Food Exchange...lots of kale.

The agenda will be a little different for the last meeting.  We’ll have a guest speaker, Maria Noel Groves, who will introduce us to herb gardening.  Maria grows her own herbs in gardens around her house, and more important, she uses the herbs in a variety of teas and medicines.  It will be a “hands on” presentation, with handouts and samples.  You will enjoy her teaching style.

We won’t have a Children’s Program this time so both Ruth and Beth can attend the workshop. They have worked hard this year for our club. Thank you Beth and Ruth!

Oct Pumpkin72

Pumpkin Fun! The kids carved pumpkins and did some experiments at the October Kid's Program.

After the workshop, for those of you who are interested, we’ll have a meeting to work on drafting a Board of Directors.  We are targeting seven people to oversee the activities of the South End Organic Garden Club, and provide the group with a broad perspective of how we should grow and develop. We will also take a first pass at a 2010 calendar of events. Contact Scott Morrison at scott.gardener@comcast.net if  you are interested in volunteering or if you have any topic/activity  suggestions for next year.

Meetings will start again in March, but we will be busy this winter planning for next year. Keep checking back on the blog or even better, add it to your RSS feed as I will be hard at work adding in more content and blogging all winter long!

 

 

 

 

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.