In Attendance: Helen, Stephen, Caroline, Pat, Bev, Deb
Pat, representing the Community Building Committee: We need rocks for the bins set up at the town offices. Green up Day will be May 30. We will observe social distancing. We want to coordinate with SVSS. We will have to wrap donuts individually. The 3rd piece is . . . . Ben and Jerry’s has a grant and she wants to apply for funds for the community supper. B&J shifted purposes in response to COVID pandemic. Pat will use language from our NEGEF Grant and will share it with us for review. It has a rolling application date.
The end goal is to have community members contributing rocks. We want as many people as possible participating. Both plastic bins do not have to be filled for gabions. The gabions for the benches are 18x12x18″
Eventually the town sign will have much larger gabions.
1. Garden Workday Results
Yay! A total of 15 people were working in the gardens throughout the day. CJ filled water tank after we left. 12 beds have now been planted, six beds were constructed and three were delivered to homes in Stamford. Holes in the fence were mended and Blueberries were mulched. The drive thru gate still needs to be repaired. We will have the next workday on Sat. May 16.
2. Distributed Beds – Next Steps
John Bohl has agreed to donate 6 yds. of top soil to SVSS. He will deliver to Pam’s and she will mix it with the compost. He will also deliver sand to the school garden to be added to soil in beds for carrots.
Deb also has compost.
3. Garden Shed – Next Steps
Steve Denalt and Ben Forbes came by the garden to discuss next steps for the shed construction with Stephen. They said that they were pretty busy, but that they would be willing to find a day in the near future to make more progress on the shed.
4. North Branch Gardens – Next Steps
Caroline, Stephen and Helen started to spread compost on one of Pam’s 3 possible garden areas. Stephen will till this area with a walk behind tiller after it has been composted. Pam wants to use weed barrier in this area.
Helen has been offered seeds from UVM including sweet potatoes. Does anyone have experience with sweet postatoes? Helen asked for enough for a 10×10 area. Let’s do some research on it.
5. Transfer Station Compost –
Helen asked to be on the selectboard agenda for Thursday, but they forgot to add he. She will go to the meeting and speak on the issue as a visitor. The idea is to make compost available to town residents at the transfer station.
6. Plant Starts –
Helen has 15 flats of starts for transplanting. She needs 4″ pots. Caroline has a billion. She will put them in a big bag.
7. Organizing Garden Maintenance
As soon as it stops snowing Helen will put up a sign at the garden. Can we use the website for people to sign up to work? We should just make phone calls to people and ask them to cover tasks.
8. Canning workshop –
Clay Z. and Helen discussed the possibility of organizing a food preservation workshop later this summer.
9. New Business –
The deadline for the census survey that people are being asked to answer has been extended to July. The results will be important for allocation of funds to the school system, and we could lose a state representative if there are not enough respondents. Perhaps we could send out a letter or make a phone tree announcement?
The Deerfield paper has posted the results of their Community Utility Board. The state has allocated funds to finance a fiberoptic networks.
Bill has a Troybuilt Roto-tiller that he is willing to lend he has not had it running for a couple of years. SVSS could take it to Roger and have it tuned. It seems that it would be a valuable asset to have for the work that we do.
Stamford VT Seed Savers 