Oh Delhi...

Hello,

 

After spending a sunny and snow-free weekend in PA, I am wondering whether it was a good idea to come back to Delhi...especially after the weather we've been having today! Even though the college is on break next week, I will be in my office so feel free to call or email me.

 

Here is what went on this week:

 

• Had 2 planning meetings with Amber Tatnall and the involved students about the WIC project. We are in the stage of drafting interview questions and thinking about ways to get participants.
• Michelle Premura and Prof. Jack Tessier have been in contact about student internships at the Turquoise Barn. She also wants to have Hospitality and Culinary students, so I will be talking to those departments.
• Met with Chef Jay and Ulla about the Local Dinner in the fall. Jay will write up a menu over the break, and then I will work on finding sources of the food.
• Campus FFT meeting is this afternoon. Among other things, we will be discussing our next program: a collaboration with Counseling and Health services called "Junk Food Science."
• I have been working heavily this week on a database that archives all of the people I have been in contact with during my time here. What projects they have been involved with, future ideas for collaboration, contact information, etc. Feel free to suggest fields/info that would be useful to have in the database.

Have a great weekend / break! Safe travels.
Mary

New Ideas and Opportunities

Hello everyone,

 

I am sending out the update early this week because I will be out of the office this Friday and Monday. I am traveling down to PA to visit my alma mater--Dickinson College. Anyway, this week was a busy one!

 

• Farm to School/Institution meeting took place on Saturday.
• Panel discussion was on Tuesday night. We had a great turnout (around 130 people!) Thank you to our panelists, everyone who helped organize the event, and everyone who attended. Key take-aways: SUNY Delhi can really set an example for the community by buying locally in a big way. We should do a better job of publicizing our progress and small successes. Communities can make it possible for low-income people to have access to local food if we are willing to work hard and connect the dots.
• I am going to be meeting with the students who are going to be working on the WIC project this Monday.
• Met with Lonny and Liz Schaefer of Catskill Cattle. Attended a Farm Bureau meeting with them. Then I took them to meet John Ford and he ordered some beef from them.
• Talked with Michelle Premura from the Turquoise Barn about the possibility of setting up a summer internship. She does raw foods cooking with what she grows on the farm. Who on campus would I talk to about setting up internships?
• Talked with Tom Recinella and he is going to give me a list of the culinary depts. special events and local products they would like to use for these events.
• A student with restaurant experience is going to work with me on the restaurant project as part of a service learning requirement for a class. Our goals are to survey restaurants in Delaware County to figure out what they are (or aren't) doing to buy local, help those who are open find ways to use local products, and write up a "Best Practices" manual based on the information we collect.
• I received more information that Peter Grannis (Maines) about their local program. I plan to call the farms that work with Maines and get information about the process from their point of view.

Enjoy the warm weather!

Mary

Food Policy and Leaky Roofs

Hello-

 

I hope everyone had a good week and stayed warm. Here is the update.

 

• Video the of discussion that occurred after the screening of FRESH is uploaded on the Farm to Table blog. Thank you Matt Juba for being a willing videographer!http://vistasunydelhi.blogspot.com/2011/02/fresh-discussion-video.html 
• I didn't get to meet with Rachel Pollen to talk about the arts festival because she had a leak in her roof and has been busy taking care of that. Probably will be able to meet next week.
• Talked more with Peter Grannis from Maines about the details of their partnerships with NY farms. If you want more information I can forward you the email from him.
• Farm to School/Institution meeting is happening this Saturday from 1-4 in Farrell 211. Parking lot "K" has been reserved for participants.
• Being Green, Making Green panel discussion is THIS TUESDAY, February 15th at 7 pm! Hope to see you there!
• To gauge student interest in the possibility of volunteering on farms, I sent out an email to all the club advisors asking them to mention it to their students.
• The idea of having a hoop house on campus is being put on hold because of financial reasons. Thank you to Jack Tessier and Birgitta Brophy for all of their hard work researching this idea.
• I have been doing some research on Food Policy Councils. This may be something to think about for the future. Perhaps a local one could be formed or we could think about trying to get a spot on the FP council in NYC. Here is a website with lots of good information about what Food Policy Councils are and the benefits to having one. http://www.foodsecurity.org/FPC/

"FRESH" discussion video

Here is the video that was taken of the discussion following the screening of "FRESH."

Good Agricultural Practices and Summer Arts Festival (January 29th through February 4th)

Hello everyone,

 

I send out emails every week outlining my progress on the Farm to Table project. This is mainly to generate discussion and keep people updated. So please feel free to email me back with ideas/suggestions.

• Talked on the phone with Peter Grannis from Maines. He gave me a list of the farms in NY that they work with (see attached document if you are interested). He also gave me a broad overview of what needs to happen before a farm can work with a big distributor. One thing is that the farm needs to be certified in "Good Agricultural Practices" (GAPS). Maybe Farm Catskills could set up a program that would help farms through the GAPS certification process.
• WIC Project: Amber Tatnall has a few students that are interested. They need to pass the online IRB course and then we can get started.
• Rachel Pollens contacted me about incorporating local food into the summer arts festival in Delhi. I am hopefully meeting with her this afternoon.
• Found out that Jon Hood (student interested in campus garden) no longer goes here.
• Finished Being Green, Making Green panel discussion flyers. They are going to be hung up around campus and in the community.

AmeriCorps conference then back to work (January 22nd through the 28th)

Hello everyone-

 

I've added some people to this list since our last FFT meeting. In brief, I send out emails every week outlining my progress on the Farm to Table project. This is mainly to generate discussion and keep people updated. So please feel free to email me back with ideas/suggestions.

 

This week I was at an AmeriCorps training from Monday through Wednesday, but here is what else happened this week:

 

• I contacted Liz Sigler from Catskill Cattle. She did AmeriCorps as well so we are going to meet so that I don't repeat anything that has already been done. Also, it will be a good way for me to learn about the challenges that farms face when trying to market their products.
• The meeting between Farm Catskills, farmers, and cafeteria managers has been moved from February 5th to Feb. 12th. I have reserved a room in Bush Hall.
• Sent an email to Jon Hood (president of Horticulture club). Before the break he expressed interest in setting up a college garden/greenhouse.
• Typed up meeting minutes from the last FFT meeting. After I meet with Barb Jones, we will be sending those out.
• Contacted Chef Jay. He is going to talk with Ulla and John Ford about setting up a time that we can meet about the Harvest dinner idea.
• Christina Viafore suggested that I email the restaurants the letter and survey (both to save money and paper) and then if they don't respond then we will send the letter through the mail. She is involved with the Chamber and has email addresses for a lot of businesses in the area.

Expensive Stamps and Phone Tag (January 15th through the 21st)

Hello everyone-

 

I can hardly believe that another week has gone by already! It was kind of a short week with Martin Luther King day but here is the update.

 

• I spent a lot of time this week finalizing the letter and survey that is going out to Restaurants about buying locally. This included personalizing the letters and getting labels printed for the envelopes. Realized that if I buy a stamp for each envelope it will cost $44. Not sure how to resolve that yet.
• Still playing phone tag with the contact from MAINES. Hopefully I will be able to contact him next week.
• Attended a Grant writing workshop on campus.
• "Attended" a webinar entitled "Collaborative Development for Connecting Farm and Community." I believe the webinar was recorded and archived so if anyone would like a link to that let me know.

Panel discussions and New Projects (January 8th through the 14th)

Hi! I hope you all have had a great week. Here is the update on the Farm to Table project.

 

• Found out about a MAINES (food distributor that CADI uses) service that works with local farms. Left a message with the contact the secretary gave me. Hopefully he will call me back and we can talk about how the service works and what it takes for a farm to become part of that distribution chain.
• Met will Amber Tatnall to discuss the details of the WIC project. Our goal is to have the proposal written by January 17th.
• Finalized the panel discussion to be held at SUNY Delhi. Here is the blurb about it that I wrote for the campus newspaper.

“Being Green, Making Green”: A panel discussion on local food entrepreneurship

The Food for Thought committee is going to present a panel discussion on February 15^th at 7:00 pm in Okun Theatre. The panel is going to feature several guests: Chris Harmon from the Center for Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship (CADE), Holly and Richard Giles from Lucky Dog Farm, Jonah Shaw from Quarter Moon Café, and Faiga Brussel from Good Cheap Food.  The discussion is going to focus on local food as a business, how and why people get involved, the challenges and rewards of local food entrepreneurship, why supporting local food is important, and what we would like to see happen in the future. The event is free and everyone is welcome. Hope to see you there!

• Had a FFT meeting on Friday morning.  Chef Jay wants to have a harvest dinner next October that would be all local food. He wants to start planning now so that farmers can plant specifically for this. I think this would be a perfect stepping stone to the college buying entire fields of tomatoes etc. in the future.  I am going to try and schedule a meeting with him to discuss this in more detail.

Its a New Year (January 1st through January 7th)

Hello everyone-

Happy New Year! To keep everyone updated on how the AmeriCorps Farm to Table project is going and to facilitate communication of ideas, I am going to send out a weekly email summarizing progress. This first email will lay out the goals of the project and the progress that has been made so far.

• Develop an interactive database that will be accessible to community partners that tracks relationships between farmers, individuals, institutions, and non-profits.

Progress: Contact information of collaborators and meetings with them has been archived.  

• Use SUNY Delhi and CADI dining services as a working laboratory to develop the best method to facilitate wholesale purchases from farmers.

Progress: CADI has bought produce, meat, and cheese from local farms for special events and everyday dining.

• Increase awareness about the possibility of wholesale purchasing from farmers by contacting and working with Delaware County restaurants, hospitals, Head Start, Senior Meals, Delaware county jail, grocery stores, and other institutions.

Progress: A Farm to Table interest group has been formed on campus. A survey addressing the difficulties of buying locally has been developed and is going to be sent out to restaurants in Delaware County. The intent of the survey is to figure out what restaurants need in order to make buying local easier.

• Conduct research and develop a plan to increase the redemption rate of Farmer’s Market Coupons (in 2009, the redemption rate was 44.7%, in 2008 the rate was 48.9%). Also, educate the community about WIC, Food Stamps, and SNAP benefits to reduce stigma.

            Progress: Working with Amber Tatnall and her Child Growth and  Development class to do a needs-assessment with WIC participants in order to determine the barriers to coupon redemption. 

• Raise awareness about food systems and health at SUNY Delhi and surrounding community through films, speakers, panels, etc.

Progress: SUNY Delhi Food for Thought group sponsored screenings and discussion of the films FOOD, Inc. and FRESH.  The group is planning to have a panel of farmers and local food entrepreneurs in February.

• Connect students to local food by providing community service opportunities where the students volunteer on local farms and at the Food Bank garden.

Progress: Students volunteered at the Food Bank garden on September 11^th National Day of Service.

• Explore other methods to bring local foods to low income families.