Endwell Community Garden

Attendance: Present: Chris Hritcko, Lisa Wilber, Jason Shaw, Pastor Daryl, Rich Purtell, Marcie Phelps, Emily Brown

Agenda:
Establish a communications plan (what meetings and when)

• Election of a Scribe
  • AI: Chris Hritcko
    

Cadence on meeting schedule
Short term (till Apr 20). Looking at Weekly meetings. Next meeting 3/7/2018 at 3:45pm
Re-evaluate after Proposal decision is made.(I see two meetings to start 1) Proposal / Garden planning 2) Steering committee (longer term).
Establish a proposal team
               AI: Chris to decompose the proposal and identify where help is needed (completion: 4/5).

• 1 st task is to define an Outreach plan. This is required as it is the number 1 metric towards showing community support and viability in the Vines proposal process.
  • Two types of people the people:  “out there” our external target.
    • What is the size? Radius ~1/2 mile. ~500 households. Includes Wayne Street and down to old golf place (Normans).
      
    • Mail a post card in advance. (week of March 5th) AI: Jason
      
    • What about renting the billboard on Antique shop. Marcie has a contact at the company. (High use on this location). This idea is more long term. We will re-visit after proposal award.
      
    • Jason has a flyer made up. 
      • Door flyers / Postcards reviewed. Comments and thoughts provided by the team.
    • TLC has a few free spots on Fox 40. Can we do something with this? Think about this as we moved forward.
  • Need to start polling the neighborhood.  AI: (Jason/Rich/ Pastor Daryl)
    
  • The people in “here” TLC support.
    • Need to have an internal “in reach” to see how people want to help. Need to refresh their memory.
    • Use same polling form as outreach  AI: (Marcie, Pastor Daryl, Lisa)
      
  • Discussion on what are we looking for in the way of “interest”
    • Can be many forms (volunteer / renting / showing support)
  • Discussion on the possibility of a sign “future site of xxx “  
  • Land transfer AI: (Jason/ Pastor Daryl )
    
  • Water discussion. Looking for support from Town of Union. AI: (Jason)
    

 

• Short term goals/plan

Garden Planning Team
Steering Committee Team
 
SWOT input / review (can be real time/ off line depending on time)
 
Initial SWOT input:
 
Strengths:
 
Strong Leadership and Support for the community garden
               Legislative          
Triumphant Life Church
Cornell Cooperative Extension
Oasis
Endwell Rotary
Vines
Access to many resources
Location (sun exposure / water access)
Site control
Parking
Scalability
Community need (food desert)
Accessibility
 
 
 
 
Weaknesses:
 
Pest Management, fence in a flood area. Requires special provisions.
Seed starting (need to establish)
Sustaining Funding (need a funding plan)
Community Outreach plan
Business support
 
Opportunities:
 
Need to Develop a Roadmap (1yr 3yr 5yr plan/vision and how to get there)

• Define future plans
  • 1st year thoughts
    • Outreach program
    • Raise bed rental
    • Funding plan
    • Metric collection
    • Establish a steering committee
    • Establish a garden planning committee

 

• Continuous improvement backed by metric collections
  • This data can be used as a toll gate for decisions making (go/ no go)
    • Volunteer hours
    • Bed utilization
    • Back log
    • Garden production / quantity / vegetable selection (what grows good, what does not and what is in demand? i.e. we have great success growing hot peppers but nobody wants them.

Large Land plot (scalability)

• Urban garden
• Chow/CSA

More Formal Youth programs (Church access affords educational programs, Oasis / UE/ME)
Good support for people with varying levels of abilities (old paved parking lot)
 
Threats:
 
Flooding
Others?

Today was the VINES Community Garden Proposal Workshop.  Nine of us attended: Chris Hritcki, Marcie Phelps and her daughter Morgan, Linda Svoboda, Lisa Wilbur, Emily Brown, Rich Purtell, James Dunn, and myself, Jason Shaw.

The VINES staff did a great job laying out the steps we need to follow to make our dream come to life.

I came away from the meeting really happy to see how much everyone is willing to step-up and get involved.  It appears that Chris, Marcie, and Lisa are all willing to be site co-coordinators.  Meanwhile, Rich & myself will work on community outreach.

I believe the next steps are to begin working on outreach materials and plan a meeting to begin laying out our vision for the proposal.