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Community Nutrition and Urban Gardening: Master Peace Community Garden

Master Peace Community Garden News

We invite everyone to come to the farm for a first hand look at the exciting things that are happening.  However, we want you to be up to date about our work even if you can't come out and see it yourself.  Therefore, this space will be a journal of the exciting and current findings in the Master Peace Community Farm. 

If you would like to sign up for our email newsletter, sent out about once per month, please sent an email asking to join to Vinnie Bevivino.

Check back here for periodic updates about what is going on in the Master Peace Community Garden.

September 2009

August 2009

July 2009

May 29, 2009

We're in transition over here at the Master Peace Community Farm.  Spring is yielding to summer (we harvested our first cucumbers yesterday!), ours school-year programs have winded down and were getting ready for our summer youth programs, and we're welcoming some wonderful new people onto our team.  And, we're hiring!

We're Hiring!
We're hiring a Summer Youth Garden and Nutrition Educator for our summer program.  You can download the job description at our website, http://engagedu.umd.edu/programs/cnuf/mpg .  Please send it to anyone you think would be interested, we need the help recruiting.

Youth Programs
We had some great success this spring with youth nutrition education.  We just finished up Science in the Garden, our first school-day series where we taught middle school youth about growing in harvesting.  In this picture, they just harvested some carrots for the farmers market.  Its okay if they eat the profits!

Farmers Market
We're selling like crazy, always amazed about what we harvest each week.  We're particularly proud of the quality of the the produce, trying to perfect our washing and storage techniques of the different crops to get the freshest produce to our customers.  We're selling every week at the Riverdale Park Farmers Market, Thursdays from 3 to 7.  If you ever want to help with our harvesting, then please stop by Thursday mornings from 9 to 2.

Staff Updates
We're so excited to have expanded our staff.  Here's who we are right now:
Vinnie Bevivino, bevivino@umd.edu, Farm Coordinator, is responsible for the overall production and operations of the farm, making it both productive for market and usable for educational programs.
Jennifer Fairfax, jfairfax@umd.edu, Youth Nutrition Coordinator, is responsible for all the youth education, including the community garden.
Christian Melendez, Production and Marketing, works solely on growing and marketing our produce.  Christian is paid for through market sales!
And our great intern, Laura, an Environmental Science and Policy student, fills in the gaps, helping with everything from harvesting and planting to volunteer management.

We're always looking for volunteer help on Saturdays from 10 to 3.  This weekend is looking beautiful, hint hint, nudge nudge.  And we're always looking for University interns, please download our internship description on our website.

May 8, 2009

As you can imagine, we've been plenty busy around here this spring.  Not only have we been planting like crazy, we've also been teaching lots of classes with middle school students, harvesting and selling produce at farmers markets and other food stores, and writing grants for a major expansion.  We're excited to tell you what we're up to!

Farm Happenings:
We've gotten 4 inches of rain in the last six days!  While that's great if your a little seedling, its been keeping us inside, or at least in our high tunnel.  But, we've been lucky to have planted nearly half of our space.  We've got carrots, red and golden beets, arugula, spring mix, lettuce, radishes, turnips, peas, kale, collards, onions, garlic, and potatoes in the ground, soaking up all that rain.  Our raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, grapes, and peach and pear trees, and all leafed out, and they're looking great.  We're excited for when they produce fruit later this year.

Inside the high tunnel, we're pruning tomato plants, harvesting spinach, strawberries, and lettuce, and staking up cucumbers.  Summer is in full swing in there, our basil is looking great!

We're waiting for a few dry days to till up some more cover crop and plant our tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, eggplant, peppers, and sweet potatoes in the ground. 

Gardening Classes:
Our after-school clubs are winding down because the after-school busses are stopping this week, but we're still holding the clubs to anyone that can walk home.  We're teaching three times a week to students at William Wirt Middle School:
- Once to an after-school gardening club who helps us plant and harvest.  They're learning all the ins and outs of what it takes to grow food.
- A second after-school group called GEMS (Girls Excelling in Math and Science) uses our farm to conduct gardening experiments.  These include different watering regiments, adding an acid solution to the water, growing in different soil mediums, and growing plants inside and outside a greenhouse.   All these experiments end in a salad fiesta, which happened after school yesterday.  A lot of fun.
- A third group is "Science in the Garden", a program that brings science classes into the farm for instruction on different plant-based lessons.  Next week we're teaching about photosynthesis, using the tomato plants in the high tunnel as a demonstration of how plants capture sunlight and use it to grow and produce food.

Up coming:
We're working on a grant to expand our space in an exciting program that would allow us to sell produce to Prince George's County Public School.  The school system would then serve the produce to William Wirt Middle School, to be used in a salad bar in their cafeteria.  This would be a model of farm-to-school and urban agriculture, and how communities can create green jobs and produce food for themselves.  We've very excited about the proposal, and will keep you updated.

Please, please, please, come and visit us!  We always need volunteers, particularly on Saturdays from 10am  to 3pm.  There's so much to be done, and we could really use the help.

Also, and this is very new for us, we're driving off the deep end into the world of online communications.  We want you to stay connected to us, keep up to date, and stay engaged.  So, while we'll still send out this monthly newsletter, you can also visit us on our new Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=4396323783), and our new Twitter page (http://twitter.com/MPCFarm).  We'd love for you to add pictures, comments, suggestions, thoughts.  But, remember, nothing beats an in-person visit!

That's all, back to the sunshine!

March 23rd, 2009

Thanks so everyone who came out and contributed on Saturday to the opening of the Master Peace Community Farm.  A special thanks to the Alternative Spring Break group who came out all day, a group of 15 UMD students who spent their spring break doing service with organizations that are working around the Chesapeake Bay.  

At one point we had 45 people, all working to weed, plant, and mulch our beds.  Here are some pictures of the day:

Upcoming Events:
Saturdays, 10am to 3pm, This was the first of our Saturday work days.  If you want to come out and volunteer, please do so any Saturday from 10am to 3pm, now until Thanksgiving!

March 27th, 1pm, We are hosing the statewide kick off of Grow It Eat It, a Maryland Cooperative Extension program to educate more Marylanders to grow their own fresh vegetables.  Come out to learn more about this impressive and important initiative being organized by our Master Gardeners.

April 9th, 3 to 7pm, We're starting to sell at the Riverdale Park Farmers Market!  The season is starting three weeks earlier than last, and we're ready for it with lots of spinach, salad mix, collards, kale, cabbage, and vegetable plants.  See you then!

March 6, 2009

Its been quite some time since we've last given you an update, but boy do we have a lot of exciting news! 

New Employee!
We're in the final stages of employing a new Education Coordinator at the Farm.  This person will be responsible for coordinating the community gardeners, teaching gardening and cooking classes open to the public in the Farm, coordinating youth education, and conducting cooking demonstrations at the nearby Riverdale Farmers Market.  Because we haven't quite sealed the deal, we'll give more information on that in a bit.

New Position!
Because of the new employee, Vinnie Bevivino's position has changed from, well, coordinating everything, to managing the Farm's production and marketing, and using the Farm as a demonstration to promote urban farming throughout Maryland.  This means that more food will be grown at the Farm, and other communities that want to start a similar project can get the help they need to get growing.

We're Teaching!
Even with snow on the ground, we started our spring teaching this week.  We started teaching middle school students from William Wirt Middle School during the day in their science classes.  They learned about the science of seed germination and then helped us plant lettuce and spinach seeds in the high tunnel and chile peppers in containers for the greenhouse.  Next week we're starting a program with GEMS (Girls Excelling in Math and Science), where middle school girls are going to set up an experiment that compares the growth of lettuce in and outside of a greenhouse, all culminating in a salad party at the end of the year.  Who new that science could taste so good?

Its Spring!
You wouldn't know it from last weekend, but warm weather is here.  Yesterday was beautiful outside, today is beautiful, and the weekend is going to be just amazing.  So, we have some volunteer opportunities for those that are just plain sick of winter and want to get outside to get dirty.  There's lots of work to be done to get the Farm ready for spring.
- I know its short notice, but this Saturday, the 7th from 1 to 4 pm, a group of 10 University students are going to be coming to volunteer, and you're invited too! 
- March 21st from 10am to 3pm is the beginning of our Saturday volunteer hours.  This day will be our first     official opening of the Farm, and we're trying to get lots of  people out for that day to help get it ready for the    community gardeners and ready to plant for market.  Also, we will be handing out community garden plot applications that day, so come by and get one.  We already have a group of University students coming, we've told lots of middle school students, and now we just need you!  It'll be a fun work day together.

Finally, we've been selling lots of produce already this year to restaurants.  If you are on campus today, swing by the Maryland Food Coop in the Stamp Student Union and ask for some spinach paneer, because the spinach is from us.  We've been selling lots of vegetables from our high tunnel, which has been growing greens all winter long.  We will start selling our produce at the Riverdale Park Farmers Market starting April 9th.

Thanks for reading, we're very excited about the season, and hope to see you out in the Farm soon!

August 20th, 2008

Its been too long since we've found our way into your inbox, a product of us being way too busy using and expanding our garden.  Bounties of tomatoes, okra, eggplant, basil, beans, and cucumbers are always pouring out of the garden, and its sometimes hard to slow down and do simple things like write emails to our supporters. 

Some Key Points:
- Save October 18th for our fall festival, and October 19th as a rain date.  We've planted more than a hundred pumpkin plants back in July for this, and its looking like it will be a pick-your-own pumpkin festival.  This is also to commemorate the work that was paid for by the Rodale Institute's grant (see below for more information)
- Keep coming to the Riverdale Park Farmers Market!  While we're always proud of what we've harvested, the produce that's available there from other farmers is wonderful.  Every Thursday from 3 until 7pm next to the MARC train station in Riverdale Park, on Queensbury Road, two blocks from Rt. 1.
- Keep volunteering!  We rely on volunteers, come over every and any Saturday from 9 until 2, and we'll put you to work and send you home with produce. 
- Keep visiting!  The garden is always open, there is no lock on our gates.  Come by if your in the area, and bring a picnic.

Since we've last updated you on our work:
- We've had our second Free Minds Collective summer program. Building on last year, we've taught 12 middle school students Monday through Friday in July about nutrition, gardening, and cooking.  They learned a lot about "seed to plate horticulture", and the politics of food advertising, and had a lot of fun too!
- From the help of the Rodale Institute's WaterWorks program, we've had a 1200 gallon rain cistern installed in the garden.  Check out the photograph, its huge.  Now we're just waiting for rain!  This grant is also paying for our fence to be expanded, wonderful art to decorate the fence and cistern, and lots of other great beautification projects.  We'll have more photos on all this in a few weeks.
- We have built a 17' x 48' high tunnel that we'll be using to extend our seasons in the spring and fall (see photo).  This was paid for by a grant from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Eduction program of the USDA, and built by the help of some amazing volunteers, both within Maryland Cooperative Extension and from the neighborhood.
- We've hired Christian Melendez using money from sales at the Riverdale Park Farmers Market.  Christian has been a huge help this year, being responsible for almost all aspects of keeping us productive.  He started interning for us back in February, and is being paid for throughout the summer.  He's a great personality to have, he's wonderful with kids, and organizes family potlucks in the garden for our community gardeners.  He's also very active in student organizations on campus and helpful in our outreach to new volunteers.  None of this work could have been possible without him.
- We continued to sell much more produce this year than last year.  This is not only possible from the great help back in the garden, but also from the help of student volunteer Kristen Mui, a senior undergraduate Urban Planning major.  She is studying urban agriculture from a planning standpoint, and helps sell our produce every week.  Another person that enables all this to happen.

Simple ways that you can help:
- Come by and volunteer.
- Tell a friend or neighbor about what we're doing, and tell them to volunteer.
- Purchase some vegetables from us at the market.

See you soon in the garden!

June 16th

The garden is now bursting with wonderful colors, smells, and flavors!  Our spring plantings yielded bountiful harvests of beautiful leafy lettuces which were a favorite among our Riverdale Farmer’s Market customers.  Kale, swiss chard, arugula and spinach were also among our popular produce.  But as the summer heat approaches (we had some scorchers in there!) our leafy friends must say goodbye make way for other tasty vegetables, fruits, and herbs.  We are expecting tomatoes, peppers, carrots, radishes, beets, onions, peas, basil, raspberries, and peaches in the upcoming weeks.  That means that we will need a lot of help with planting, weeding, and mulching too—so please stop by Saturdays 9-2 to volunteer.  We are in the process of developing a work-share program so you may be able to take some produce home in reward of your hard work!

Our community garden plots are also flourishing!  Come visit the garden to admire the community plots which full of corn, tomatoes, strawberries, broccoli, cabbage, sunflowers and much, much more! 

Next month the Engaged University will be hosting the Free Minds Collective summer enrichment program.  Students will be working the garden, learning about all aspects of seed-to-plate horticulture.  We’ll be seeding and weeding, harvesting and cooking.  We’ll also be doing some exciting veggie art in the garden.

Furthermore, we are happy to announce that we were chosen by the Rodale Institute as a winner of their WaterWorks grant program.  We've just received funding approval for some very exciting projects including a 1500 gallon rainwater cistern to help us conserve more water, new benches, signage throughout the garden, as well as expanding our fence to go the entire length o the parking lot. We'll give more information about that later when these projects get underway.

Also, at the end of the month we will be building a high tunnel adjacent to the fenced area of the garden.  We recieved funding form a USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Eduction grant.  A high tunnel is a greenhouse –like structure that will allow us to grow more vegetables for longer periods of time.  If you want to help with the construction please contact us!  We’re planning on the last week in June and the first week in July.

Last, please visit us and all the other vendors at the Riverdale Farmer’s Market on Thursdays 3-7 and support your local farmers.  We will be hosting cooking demonstrations which have been a huge hit.  So far we have cooked up a beet salad, asparagus soup, kale salad, and even a bike-power blended smoothie!  The summer heat is sure to bring lots of great produce to the market.

We hope to see you in the garden or at the market very soon.  Thanks for all of your support!


March 18

We are feeling on the cusp of spring now with these longer days and frostless nights.  Lots of vegetables survived the winter and are growing again, giving our garden a spattering of green.  However, we have taken field trips to the University of Maryland campus greenhouse to start lots of seeds, and are excited to start cultivating the ground once again and replant with this year's set of vegetables.  Before we find ourselves with dirty knees and gardening gloves, we wanted to give a quick reminder to everyone:

This Saturday the 22nd, we're asking for anyone to come and help us get our garden ready for the upcoming growing season.  We'll be there from 10 to 2 with a group of University students from the Alternative Spring Break who have decided to work on our community garden during their spring break instead of go off to some far away beach.  Come on out and say thank you by getting your hands dirty!

And, please keep April 19th on your calendar as our opening party for the garden.  There will be food and fun for your whole family from 11 to 3.  Tell your neighbors!

Finally, we have two more community meetings about the garden this upcoming year.  The first is on March 27 from 6 to 7 pm and the second is on April 5th from 10 to 11 am.  Come and learn about our garden and how you, your family, or your child can become involved in the garden this growing season.  We will answer all your questions, and have plot applications.

February 28th

We wanted to confirm with everyone the the upcoming events in the garden.  These diverse events will answer your questions about our garden, get your hand dirty preparing for the upcoming growing season, and be fun for your whole family too.  Please mark your calendar, we'd love to see you out here!

March 4th - 6 to 7 PM - Community meeting #1, Sign up for a community plot, ask questions about our program, and give your input on how the garden can best serve you and your family.
March 15th  - 10 to 11 AM - Community meeting #2
March 22nd - 10 AM to 2 PM - Neighborhood work day, Come out for a fun day of volunteering in the garden.  Clean up for the upcoming growing season, prepare beds, and plant a few transplants too!  A group of University students in the Alternative Spring Break program will be working in the garden that day, and we'd love to show our appreciation with some neighborhood volunteers too.
March 27th - 6 to 7 PM - Community meeting #3
March 29th - 11 to 3PM - Neighborhood work day - A second work day geared for those that couldn't make the first because it was during both the public schools' and the University's spring break.
April 5th - 10 to 11 AM - Community meeting #4
April 19th - 10 to 3 PM - Spring Festival - Come celebrate the beginning of our second growing season with a fun day of food and games for the whole family.

We have a PDF of a flyer for the four community meetings, that you can download from our website.

February 18th

A quick update from the Master Peace Community Garden:

Check out our video on YouTube!
We created a short video for a grant proposal that we submitted last week, and posted in on YouTube.  It is not our most academic piece of work, but we think it gets across what we've been able to do in the last year, and our highest hopes for the years to come.  You can view it at http://youtube.com/watch?v=CpYlHehRSKk .

Community Garden Meetings
The warm weather had us itching to jump the gun on spring and the frost brought us back to reality.  We previously said that we were going to host community garden meetings on February 20th, March 1st, March 4th, and March 15th.  In order to better promote these meetings to include as many people as possible, we are going to cancel the first two meetings to give us more time.  The meetings on the 4th and 15th will continue to happen, and we will reschedule the two cancelled meetings.  You can help by telling your neighbors about these two scheduled meetings:

March 4th 6 - 7 PM
March 15th 10 - 11 AM

All the meetings will be at the Center for Educational Partnership (address below), where the garden is located at.  Look for a flyer in the next few days.

Internships
We are going to need more help than ever this year, and need your help spreading the word about our internship program.  If you know anyone looking for an internship, our ad can be downloaded here.

January 24th, 2008 Even though the garden is frozen, the growing season is right around the corner and we  are starting to prepare for another successful year.  There are two major things to think about:

-We are accepting applications for the 2008 growing season for garden plots.  We have about 20 community garden plots that are available to families in and around Riverdale.  While they don't cost any money, and water is available on site, we do ask that you keep your garden plot tended to and productive, and at the end of the season clean up the plot for the winter.  If you would like a plot, download the form and either print it out or mail it to us.

-The Maryland Master Gardeners are holding their annunal training at the Center for Educational Partnership, where the garden is located.  The is a great opprotunity for residents to learn more about horticulture and gardening.

November 8th, 2007 For this first time in months, the staff of the Master Peace Community Garden is asking themselves "What now?".  After months of trying to keep up with planting seeds and pulling weeds, the harvests and markets, and the constant flow of students and volunteers, we have a time to catch our breath and relax.  After a summer of plants growing faster than we could keep up with, we are starting to wish that growth wasn't quite so slow.

The colder months are going to allow us to focus on the behind the scense work in order to continue our efforts.  In the garden, we are planning on building a small tunnel to protect our greens and lettuces, which we are experimenting with growing throughout the winter.  We are writing grants to maintain funding for our project, and have started writing a curriculum that will help teachers use gardening to teach nutrition. 

September 23, 2007 We've been excited for the break in the weather and the transition from summer to fall at the Master Peace Community Garden.  While many gardeners are take their tired tomato plants as a cue to turn in the shovel until next spring, we are still pushing full force, and we need your help.  This Saturday, from 9AM  to 2PM, we, along with university and community volunteers, will be doing a final weeding and mulching of our perennial beds, removing annual plants that are done being productive to make way for a cover crop, and planting a large section of the garden with cooking greens such as kale, collards, and mustard greens as well as a variety of lettuces.  We hope to put a significant section of these greens and lettuces under cover to keep the space productive throughout the winter.

When we get our transplants in the ground and beds cleaned up for the winter, we have two exciting projects left for the fall.  First, we are building a greenhouse.  This will be used to grow our transplants for next spring as well as grow as many vegetables throughout the winter as we can.  Second, we are expanding the garden.  We are going to plow the soil to the left of the shed, expanding our growing capacity to better supply our market next year.  We will plow the soil and plant a cover crop this year, and then next year start planting vegetables in the new space.  The new space will be set up more like a farm than a garden with straight rows and grass paths along the contour of the terrain. 

Finally, we published a brochure for the garden, and we're really excited about this.  I've attached it in this email, but have reduced the resolution so the size of the file is smaller.  If you want a better resolution version, or would like printed copies, let me know and we can get them to you.