With LFF I have been refining my skills in creating important
contacts with farmers. I have learned a lot from these wonderful people along
the way! Ela Family Farm has a huge orchard and they are so popular that their applesauce
sells in Whole Foods! The Birds and The Bees farm specialized in organic,
natural Lamb that sells like hot cakes on the market each week! Holy Terror
Farm is run by the person who created LFF and ORE! They have all organic produce
and free range chicken, not to mention a large orchard on their beautiful farm!
Rock Wall Gardens is run by our market facilitator Diana and sells seed starts,
greens and herbs! Getting to know some of the farms has been a great experience
that has created contacts for me that will be great for my future!
Friday, August 2, 2013
Farm Tour Planning
Planning the farm tour has a lot of ins and outs to
make sure they are all taken care of. It is a fun and new process! One thing
that has been really helpful is learning about all of the ways you can market
and advertise an event. Posters, emails to customers, signs at the farmers
markets and around town are just a few thing that can be done to advertise for
events. FaceBook is a great way to get the word out too by creating events and
inviting your friends. There are other logistics like transportation and lunch
that all have to be taken care of. Contacting the farms to schedule a tour and
estimating how many people will attend for lunch boxes to be made and
transportation to be set up are all aspects that are required to think about.
It is a fun and tedious process but is worth it for people to see where their food
comes from!! I have had a great time learning how to set up events with ORE and
LFF. I have gained some valuable knowledge that will be beneficial to my future
as well!!
Local Recipes
Local recipes are a blast to try out! While gathering
information about the cookbook I am writing for LFF, I have had an amazing time
contacting the farmers and hearing their stories. Another awesome aspect of this
is learning how to use produce in ways I never thought I would. I have tried
out a recipe for zucchini cookies!! They
are so unique and different not to mention delicious. I have also tried out a
recipe for Garlic Scape Hummus, it was tangy and wonderfully tingly on my taste
buds. I have also been talking to Ela Family Farms who has a signature apple
sauce recipe that sells in WholeFoods! These are just some examples of the
wonderful recipes I have tried out and the great people I have been talking to.
Using local food to create recipes is a unique and new thing for me. I love to
cook but never thought to think outside the box! There will be a new section on
the LFF website in the coming months about all of the recipes I have found.
This will help our customers order more produce and give them new fresh ideas on
how to use the signature items of the farm!!
Gunnison Farmers Market VS. LFF Online Market
This summer I am also an intern with the Gunnison
Farmers Market. I want to use this blog post to describe the differences
between the farmers market and the LFF online farmers market. There is the
obvious difference of setting up and taking down the market. With tents and
tables, it is a tiring job. There is a similarity of first come first served. With
the Gunnison market and the online market, produce runs out. If you get there
early enough, you will get your desired produce, if you come later, you probably
have missed out on some cool items. Another similarity is the local products. All
of the produce from both markets comes from the localities of Colorado, while
LFF is more local, but the Gunnison market features stuff from all over Colorado!
This summer has been a blast working for both of these markets! I have learned
a lot of new things about how businesses work and all of the complexities of
running the operations smoothly. They both involve a lot of helping hands to
make them successful. The atmosphere of the outdoor Gunnison market is fun and
exciting, while the LFF market is social only on pick up days. But both have their
pros and cons. I enjoy working for both organizations and helping them run because
they offer local food to our community. They are some of the main driving
forces of the local food movement!!
The Challenge of making this online database user-friendly is the biggest challenge of all considering the mass amount of information that the database contains. Our first move in designing a system that is easier to navigate was to establish five major categories. These are UGRWCD Organizational Documents, Water Projects, Legislation, Other Conservancy Districts, and Research & Development. I feel that it would benefit all to have a few post explaining these categories and the types of documents that could be found in each category. After dealing with all these documents in many forms myself, I can now find it to be the easiest to navigate them on our website. That being said it is important to get a first hand explanation from someone who designed the system to give the user a place to start (believe me you can get lost quick).
To start, I would like to summarize the Research & Development category. This category contains all the documents that pertain to scientific studies/findings and non-water project information, such as climate change or soil conditions. Speaking from a students perspective this category would be the most helpful in finding new information about things that are already known are present in the Gunnison Valley. For instance I am sure that everyone is familiar with the presence of a cloud seeding project in the Valley, but how would one go about finding detailed information on the subject. The cloud seeding folder on the Research & Development page provides everything from infrastructure design, to emails discussing specific cloud seeding events. Some of which many people could have been present for and didn't even know it. The last important point to make about this category is that it includes a lot of information not specific to Colorado. A lot of the studies and experiments that are available on this page took place in the Colorado River Basin Region, which includes almost the entire Western United States. This means that this category also provides interesting information on how other states use/abuse their delegated water. One state that has always seemed to slip through the cracks as far as water planning goes is Wyoming. It was interesting to me to read through the Wyoming Water Planning file, which provided a lot of good information on the small water commissions they have. This is quite the change from our state, where water conservancy districts are as rampant as Starbucks....
Here is the Link to the Research and Development page. Check it out if you have time and as always please give me feedback on anything you would like.
http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/?page_id=3719
To start, I would like to summarize the Research & Development category. This category contains all the documents that pertain to scientific studies/findings and non-water project information, such as climate change or soil conditions. Speaking from a students perspective this category would be the most helpful in finding new information about things that are already known are present in the Gunnison Valley. For instance I am sure that everyone is familiar with the presence of a cloud seeding project in the Valley, but how would one go about finding detailed information on the subject. The cloud seeding folder on the Research & Development page provides everything from infrastructure design, to emails discussing specific cloud seeding events. Some of which many people could have been present for and didn't even know it. The last important point to make about this category is that it includes a lot of information not specific to Colorado. A lot of the studies and experiments that are available on this page took place in the Colorado River Basin Region, which includes almost the entire Western United States. This means that this category also provides interesting information on how other states use/abuse their delegated water. One state that has always seemed to slip through the cracks as far as water planning goes is Wyoming. It was interesting to me to read through the Wyoming Water Planning file, which provided a lot of good information on the small water commissions they have. This is quite the change from our state, where water conservancy districts are as rampant as Starbucks....
Here is the Link to the Research and Development page. Check it out if you have time and as always please give me feedback on anything you would like.
http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/?page_id=3719
I guess the first thing to do would be to discuss the ins
and outs of the project that is finally complete at this time. The UGRWCD decided somewhere around 2010 that
they wanted to start going digital with all their document, which was a great
concept, however it left one problem; a room full of file cabinets that were
not so digital. This was the birth of
the project that took over a year to complete and countless people hours of
work. All 15,000+ documents had to be
organized, filtered through, scanned, uploaded, and posted to the UGRWCD’s
water documents library. The idea with
the library is that it will not only preserve some of the older documents that
the UGRWCD had stashed away, but it will also provide a good public resource
for water issues in the Valley. Since
our town is very small, sometimes it can be difficult trying to find specific information
about the area, and just through my
experience with this database, it has opened my eyes to a lot of
information I never knew was out there.
By
going through all these documents, I have certainly learned a lot more than I
thought I would just doing “mindless” scanning and uploading. Having to upload these documents allowed me
to read through them and discover just a little more about the area than meets
the eye. Through this blog I hope to
report to you just a few of the interesting things I found throughout my work
on the project. A lot of them are things
that I have heard about in classes at Western, and it just made it even more
intriguing to see it in the real world.
I would also encourage everyone to visit the website and give me a
little feedback on what you think. http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Artists are slowly crawling out of the woods to regain a sense of time and space. If they are lucky they may get to a computer to blogg about their time in the bush. The last residency CAR held was a backpacking trip through the John Muir Wilderness.
Colorful writing with a heavy shower of humor will soak your mind while reading this one. Enjoy
Creative Writer, tory tepp writes about his John Muir Wilderness awakening. Blogging about it was fueled by a continuous stream of "alternating coffee and IPAs."
Hey 8-01-2013 is IPA Day so check his peice today!
Colorful writing with a heavy shower of humor will soak your mind while reading this one. Enjoy
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