Edible Schoolyard Program

Edible Schoolyard / CSA Farm School Project
Preliminary Management Structure
This purpose of this document is to outline CRMPI’s role in construction, infrastructure and consulting for the school projects. The Roaring Fork High school project has been approved by the school board and will begin infrastructure and greenhouse building over the summer of 2009. Division of labor and job assignments is where our focus lies right now so that we may begin this project in an orderly and timely fashion. We welcome input and feedback from all the other involved parties in this process.
CRMPI’s Role: CRMPI is a 501(c)3 that will umbrella the school projects and provide staff and support to develop and oversee Edible Schoolyard and CSA Farm school projects. Students for the CSA Farm school will be recruited through CRMPI’s website and advertising as well as through postings on other sites such as ATTRA.gov.
EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD – Operated during the 9 month regular school year
The Edible Schoolyard project will be managed and maintained by hired staff members once the construction of the greenhouse and gardens and infrastructure are complete. There will be 2 part to full time positions required for this purpose.
• An Edible schoolyard coordinator – will work with teachers from RFHS and visiting schools to schedule class times and activities. This person will be in charge of the educational component of the Edible Schoolyard and will act as a liaison between the school and CRMPI. 9 months per year
• A Garden Manager – a person with gardening abilities and training to coordinate all the growing related tasks of the garden and greenhouse. This person will be in charge of planting and harvesting schedules, greenhouse and irrigation maintenance and composting. An experienced gardener is needed for this scale of a project. The gardener may be called upon at times to give advice or help with student planting projects. 9 or 12 months TBD
CSA FARM SCHOOL – Operated for 5 months including summer break
The CSA Farm School will continue to be operated by CRMPI and instructors will be hired to operate the program and manage the CSA with the students. Outside instructors, who have CSA operational experience, may be contracted to teach and the students will visit larger farms to learn larger scale farming techniques. The CSA Farm School will operate on tuition, CSA membership proceeds, donations and grants. We see the need for 1 full time Instuctor/Manager initially and depending on class size, a second staff member may be required. Class size will be capped at 20 students to guarantee a quality instruction for all students.
• CSA Farm School Instructor / Manager – this position will require some prior CSA knowledge and experience. This person will make lesson plans based on curriculum written for this program and work directly with students in hands-on application of the course materials. This person will be in charge of handling CSA tuition and membership monies and budgeting expenses for operating costs. 5 Days per week (flexible) 5 months per year with some possible overlap time
CRMPI Project Team – Initial phases:
Jerome Osentowski
Infrastructure development, Consulting, staff recruitment, training staff
Brian Blount
Infrastructure development, research & writing (grants, curriculum), graphic design for printed materials and websites, labor
Illene Pevec
Program advisor, Grant writing, volunteer coordinator, curriculum building
Recruited volunteer labor and hired contractors:
Many tasks will require volunteer labor and some will require the hiring or in-kind donation of experienced tradesmen:
Irrigation, Greenhouse construction, Fence building , Security system, Electrical, Excavation for greenhouse, Concrete?, Compost bins
Compensation for CRMPI team:
Community support for this project will be crucial to its long-term success. CRMPI will provide the technical support for the project based on the experience of Jerome and his staff of gardening and CSA operation in this climate zone.
Actual time is hard to estimate until the project gets started, so this pay scale is to help structure a preliminary budget. We are basing the initial project time at 30 hours per week, but actual time may greatly exceed that. CRMPI will be assigning students from the Permaculture design courses individual components of the school design to help cut design and consulting fees. We will find volunteer labor and licensed professional who are willing to donate their time as in-kind donations whenever possible.
Jerome Osentowski:
Consulting: $100 per hour ($50 billed, $50 in-kind donation)Includes design and layout work for greenhouse and gardens during the design and construction phases
Oversight/Management: $35 per hourGeneral project management time where Jerome is on site or doing project related work (hiring employees, reading proposals, etc.)
Teaching/Training: $75 per hour ($50 billed, $25 in-kind donation)Time for training employees, teaching classes
Initial retainer fee:
Brian Blount:
Graphic Design: $35 per hour ($25 billed, $10 in-kind donation)Includes design for printed materials, advertising and website design
Grant / Curriculum - Research & Writing: $40 per hour ($20 billed. $20 in-kind donation)Research for available Grants for both projects, grant writing and compiling curriculum
General Time: $15 per hour Construction, labor

Launch the RFHS Greenhouse! - Conference call Tues. May 26, 9am

AGENDA:
News:
Cleveland Foundation donation received, in the name of Mrs. Anne M. Jones of Chagrin Falls, OH, for $5,000. Toward the Roaring Fork High School Project.
5 Point Film Festival bake sale - $2,000. expected, plus a generous donation from the festival itself, still being determined. Major Kudos from the festival organizers and the public, on the quality, quantity and consistency of the baked goods our network of friends produced and delivered!
RE-1 School Board gave us unanimous approval to proceed with the RFHS Garden and Greenhouse Project. Now we must raise the funding to build it all, this Summer. (see below)
RFHS Greenhouse & Garden Project:
Project Goal: $85,000. to build a 42-foot dia. Growing Dome, and a 1.5-acre fenced Garden.
The most important thing we have to discuss is the long list of grant applications we must make, with lots of help from Jerome and his interns, and the fun part, gathering the community of Carbondale for one or more fundraising events this Summer, to get all the money we need to build both greenhouse and garden at the high school, before September. Jerome says the money is out there and available, and it's time to harvest it.
I propose we plan a large dinner at the Rec Center, with food from all the restaurants. The Roaring Fork HAMS Homebrewers Club is willing to brew beer for a community dinner fundraiser this Summer, a half-dozen taps of homebrewed beer in as many flavors.
DONORS: Imagine yourself at the start of the school year, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, with the honor of reading the list of donors who helped make it happen. This is the list of people we will be asking, and none of them wants to be missed when we read that list, and when it's published in the newspapers. - C.O.R.E. / Sopris Foundation / Fat City Farms donors / Sustainable Settings Ranch / Neislank Ranch / Turnbull Ranch / River Ranch HOA / Aspen Glen HOA / Churches / Carbondale Businesses / Carbondale Town Council / Carbondale Citizens /
GRANTS: Jerome and Brian have a long list of Grants that are perfect for this project, with application deadlines, and are working on them. We can work with CRMPI enormously by donating money to hire them some help, or by diving in and helping with the research, writing, printing, mailing and followup.
Summary:
The one big thing we can do to help raise money is to mobilize the community of Carbondale, and to help organize them. How can we get the word out? What do we say when someone asks, "What can I do to help?" Let's create that list, and keep it here on the blog, and expand it into our website, into the Volunteer and the Donate tabs. We should have plenty of harnesses hitched to this wagon!
Carbondale is a community where when there's a parade, no one is watching, because everyone is marching. Let's harness that energy and kick it into high gear!
Food & Cooking Classes:
It may be time to kick this idea into second gear: A marriage of Local Food Growers, Local Chefs, Realtors with fancy kitchens (and houses) for sale, and some wonderful real-time and time-lapse Video Production, for Grassroots TV and our own website. Fat City Farms is evolving into the "Community Yeast" that will mobilize Carbondale, then Aspen and Basalt, to support these school greenhouse projects. What better to be known for than connecting the dots, bringing the community together, over local food, its preparation and preservation? Each of us can help move this along by talking with Realtors and Growers about it, lining up the kitchens, the gardens, the chefs and the video-meisters, setting some dates and recording Class #1.

See you all at 9:00 am Tuesday, May 26.

Fat City Farms WEBSITE UPDATE

Everyone please review and post comments at the bottom. We are embarking on a Fat City Farms website overhaul, to accurately describe our mission, especially with respect to CRMPI and other groups in the valley.

Mission: the reality is that CRMPI is responsible for running the CSA Farm School, and FCF is raising the funds necessary to run the school. Likewise, this translates into the mission to build Greenhouses and Gardens at local schools - CRMPI and Eco Systems Design will plan, design and help to build them, while Fat City Farms will be the community glue that brings all the resources together, networking to raise funds and volunteers. Does that make sense? Does anyone have other elements of the FCF mission to suggest? For now, I propose to expand our mission statement, something like: "Growing Community and Farmers for a Healthy Local Food Economy"

The "buttons" on our home page would be in the following two rows:
home - contact - links - donate
projects - curriculum - volunteer

Home: as it is currently, with an altered mission statement;
Contact: list email as: info@fatcityfarms.org and have AJ forward emails from there to MT
Links: CRMPI, CORE, Basalt Thrift, Common Sense, Ecosystems Design, Aspen Homegrown, Yampah Greenhouse blog, RFHS Greenhouse blog, Pitkin County Greenhouses blog, Heritage Fruit Trees blog,
Donate: what does it take to set up a PayPal account that allows people to donate money to FCF, with good records for who, when, how much, so we can generate a thank you letter?

Projects: A list of Projects, and links to them:
CSA Farm School - Danny's video of 2008 summer classes, CRMPI Phoenix reconstruction, etc;
Heritage Fruit Tree Project, with link to our HFT-Blog http://heritagefruittrees.blogspot.com/
Yampah Mtn HS Greenhouse, with link to Blog http://yampahgreenhouse.blogspot.com/
Roaring Fork HS Gardens, with link to Blog: http://rfhs-greenhouse.blogspot.com/
Pitkin County Greenhouses, with link to Blog: http://pitkingreenhouses.blogspot.com/
Curriculum: Google Calendar, covered with classes being offered by CRMPI, CSA Farm School, CMC, Sustainable Settings, Fresh & Wyld, Common Sense Re-Generation, anyone else teaching toward our mission - one thing we are missing is a Cooking and food preservation school, which is a community-building opportunity no one is addressing yet? FCF could take this on as a signature, using it to create all kinds of community celebrations!
Volunteer: this could become volunteer-central for many things, starting this summer with the RFHS Greenhouse construction. We can expand the influence of this Volunteer Bulletin Board to include community garden projects, tree-pruning parties, school garden and greenhouse planting parties, harvest parties, etc.

That's all for now!
MT

5 Point Film Festival - for the RFHS Greenhouse Project!

This Thursday evening, May 7, the 2nd annual 5-Point Film Festival will open in Carbondale, running through Sunday, May 10. Festival organizers are featuring our School Greenhouses, and are donating a portion of festival proceeds to the Roaring Fork High School Greenhouse & Gardens project. This event has great potential to inspire the Carbondale community, as well as the whole Valley, to help with our school greenhouses. We already have one success underway, in the Yampah Mtn. HS Greenhouse dome, featured this past week in the Glenwood Post Independent.
We have agreed to provide refreshments for the four days of the festival, in the form of baked goods, such as cookies, brownies, fruit bars, etc. Estimated quantity needed: 700 – 900 items. They don’t need to be individually wrapped, a wrapped plate of cookies will be fine. So, if each baker made 40 pieces, we would need to have 20 bakers; 80 pieces per baker = 10 bakers, etc. I am freezing 30 oatmeal-plum bars today, and will make more Monday evening. If you can help, please reply to this email to let me know what you can provide. We will post drop-off instructions for midday this Thursday, May 7, on the RFHS Greenhouse blog
Danny Brown and Fat City Farms have teamed up to produce a film trailer about the School Greenhouses. You can preview a draft of the trailer: http://www.fatcityfarms.org/video/1.html
We hope everyone agrees this is a wonderful opportunity for all the food groups in the Valley to shine, and to inspire many others to join the work we are doing.
Thank you SO MUCH for your help, and your wonderful baking skills!
Michael Thompson
http://www.fatcityfarms.org/
'growing farmers'
970-274-0634
Baked Goods Drop Off Instructions: RFHS Greenhouse Blog