New Roots love!

I'm slightly ashamed to say that I just found this picture of my friends Michaela and Michelle on facebook and just posted it right away. I was so proud of their New Roots love (even in the off season) that I couldn't resist. It appears to me that their love and support of the New Roots program has actually increased their cooking skills. Just keep that in mind...

And by off season, I mean things are getting started! Look for an update about the past few weeks- starting ESL classes, starting transplants, starting to get so excited about this next season!

Can you help us?

We're getting busy thinking about next market season. Our Market fees are paid (thanks to a generous donation!), the seeds are ordered and we're fixin' to get into the greenhouse. As we've been thinking about this next season, we've been thinking about stuff we're gonna need. Like everyone else, our budget is tight tight tight! Do you have any of the following items sitting around your house? Would you be willing to purchase some on our behalf? Or hit up a couple of thrift stores?

Let me know if you do! Any help would be awesome. (And we can get you a tax reciept!)

kitchen or utility knives for harvesting
sharpies
scissors for harvesting greens (kitchen scissors preferred)
plastic grocery store bags for market
folding tables for the Juniper Market
folding chairs
Laminating sheets (11.5" x 9")
big cooler for CSA bags
colored copy paper for flyers
Baskets (all sizes)
rubberbands
table cloths
gallon-size ziploc bags
dry-erase markers
blue 10-gallon size tote bins from Target
gardening tools (hand tools, hoes, spade forks, utility wagon)
accordion-style expandable file folders (for our clients to organize their paperwork)

Winter Workshops

The New Roots farm doesn't sleep in the winter! We've been busy throughout the past few months with our workshops. We started with the introduction workshop- this one was open to our 9 returning farmers and our 4 new farmers. We felt like it was important information for everyone to hear. We talked about the training farm model... the things that growers can expect from Catholic Charities and KCCUA, and what we expect of them.
Subsequent workshops have included marketing for the farmer's market, introduction to vegetable growing, and making our field maps. The field maps workshop is really hard. Most refugees are not familliar with maps so we have to start from scratch, explaining that a map is a picture from above a place. As simple as this sounds, is can be really confusing. Here are a few pictures from the field maps workshop.

The growers looked at pictures in the seed catalogue and thought about what they wanted to plant in their field. Here is Dena and Pay Lay working with Joanne on theis maps.

Daniel Dermitzel from KCCUA taught this workshop. Here he is working with Zawadi to pick out crops she is interested in.


This is Zawadi's map. This season will be her first year selling at market.

This past week's workshop was on paying sales tax. Throughout the season, the growers have been saving their sales tax to pay the state. We all started checking accounts so that we can pay the money. On Thursday, we went through the forms and actually wrote out the check. Before we wrote the check, we tried a few practice checks. Most of the growers have never written a check before, so once again we have to start at the beginning.

Here is Hawo's check. She did a great job of painstaikingly copying "Missouri Dept. of Revenue" on her check. Although she needed a little help with the rest, we were so excited! Maybe next year she will be able to write the check herself!