Green Plate Special

Green Plate Special is coming up on our first year on our property! I look back on my first posting to see we thanked The Madrona Company for their generous lease to us for this property and to the Hilton Family for our first private donation, helping to pay our bills and to create what we have to date accomplished! It’s been A-BUNCH of BUNCHES! (pun intended).

We continue our gratitude to them and extend our amazement and further gratitude to EVERYONE who has volunteered, partnered and supported (in so many ways) our budding program this year. The faces and actions of all the youth says it all. We have made a lot happen with your help this year, and have plans for as much and more in 2012 (not to mention all the fun and creativity). WE NEED TO GET THAT KITCHEN ON THE PROPERTY! (we invite you to help with this using the donation button to the lower right of the page).

We have raised over $38,000 in private donations; $150,000 in in-kind donations; built and are building a solid group of wonderful volunteers (we need more for our classes next year). You have evidence in our blog of all that we have done this year.

We have also had our first Foundation Grant from the Wyman Youth Trust!

I want to extend a special thanks to 3 restauranteurs and their restaurants, for their generous donations (in varied ways) and offers of further support for the coming year:

Joanne Herron & Jim Drohman -Le Pichet and Cafe Presse http://lepichetseattle.com/home/

Carolin Messier – Harvest Vine http://www.harvestvine.com/

Tom Douglas & Jackie Cross -all 5 of his restaurants http://tomdouglas.com/

I also want to thank LIBBY SINCLAIR who partnered with me to get GPS off the ground this year. She was the base of our beginning curriculum and a force in connecting us to great people and was, of course, a huge part of the garden and programing we created this year. Libby has moved on to other things and is no longer involved in GPS, but the part she played helped us get off the ground.

WISHING YOU ALL A WARM AND WARM-BEVERAGE HOLIDAY TIME! CHEERS AND HAPPY EATING FOR THE NEW YEAR!

Enjoy the pictures of our November 19th GroundUp gathering in the garden! This will be the last garden group until sometime around President’s Day. But there are still a few things we hope to winter over and again we were lucky with the weather (predicted snow and rain and got cold sunshine).
WE:
Planted bushels of bulbs (flower will be springing up all over….this spring).

Made 3 cloches to protect the last of the greens (but the collards and a few other things will be out in the open -daring the weather to harm them).

Worked with power tools! One of our groups worked with my husband, Martin, to finally adorn our fence with some of the art work produced over the summer with some of our youth. Check out some of the posts on Union and also near the bus stop.

Grilled bread with garlic and olive oil to accompany our garden soup. Chard, collards, kale, potatoes, butternut, onions and hot peppers. It was a really good soup and nicely seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper -YES! EVERYONE ate soup. Even those who warily refused to touch it, finally tasted it and ate all that was in their bowl! Needless to say the bread disappeared quite rapidly….toasty and tasty.

WE HAVE PARTNERED WITH MADRONA K-8′S MIDDLE SCHOOL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT! and also MADRONA’S YMCA PROGRAMING!
We are so excited to be working with both these groups in the new year.

We also have great things planned for the start of the new year, with both TREEHOUSE FOR KIDS and THE DELTA’S ACADEMY.
I’m so excited for all of it! thanks to you all for giving us the opportunity to work together!