Seacoast Eat Local

This June, CoFed’s regional organizers are hosting two week-long summer retreats to train and empower the next generation of campus food cooperative leaders. CoFed is a national training program and research institute for students interested in creating ethically-sourced, cooperatively-run sustainable food storefronts and cafés on college campuses. If you’re a college student and you would like to learn all about how to establish a new food co-op at your campus, retreats will be held in California and New York. Application deadline for the East Coast CoFed Retreat is June 1st:

The East Coast CoFed Retreat

Hawthorne Valley Farm, Ghent (mid-upstate), NY

June 19–25, 2011

The West Coast CoFed Retreat 

Orella Stewardship Institute, Santa Barbara, CA

June 11–17, 2011

CoFed, is trying to reach students interested in food sustainability, food sovereignty, and food justice to come to our West and East Coast retreats this summer to find ways of bringing more student control into their campus food systems.

 

This summer, college teams from all over the country will converge on our East and West Coast retreats in mid-June to create or expand a student-run, cooperative, sustainable food businesses on their campuses. CoFed, provides support to students interested in food sustainability, food sovereignty and food justice in their endeavors to bring more democracy into their campus food systems. Each retreat will host programing all day, including professional development, business and organizing skills, and yummy sustainable food. We will be bringing in prominent figures within the local food and co-op worlds to give workshops. The East Coast retreat will be getting a visit by Bill McKibben!

 

Why do you want to come?

• To launch a student food co-op!

• Skill building

• Networking

• Professional development

• Learn about other projects and build on your own

• Yummy sustainable ethical Food

• A beautiful natural landscape

 

The application can be found here >. The cost for the week-long retreat is $250 per person. If this is beyond your means, please contact a regional organizer as we give scholarships on a case by case basis. Scholarship form can be found here >.

 

For more information: www.cofed.org.

Join New Entry Sustainable Farming Project on Tuesday, May 24th, to learn how to set up a brooder and raise healthy chicks. Check their website for other field workshops in this series:

Poultry Workshop Series: Brooding

New Entry Sustainable Farming Project

Ogonowski Memorial Fields

126 Jones Ave, Dracut, MA

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

4 to 6 p.m.

New Entry’s next poultry workshop is coming up! Our Brooding Workshop is next Tuesday, May 24th, from 4–6 p.m., and it’s only $15 (free for New Entry graduates)—register now!

 

This field training will cover how to get poultry through the crucial first few weeks. We’ll go over equipment, setting up a brooder and preparing for the chicks to arrive; watching chick behavior and letting them tell you what adjustments to make; feed, water and grit; chick health concerns and what to watch for; predator control; alternate brooder designs; and moving the birds out to pasture. Best of all, the stars of the show will be our chicks — around 150 in all, and half of them will be less than a week old.

 

This is the third installment of our poultry workshop series. Click here to read about the rest.

 

To register online > Email lysisson@gmail.com or sanderson@comteam.org or call 978-654-6745 with any questions. Otherwise, we’ll see you next week!

 

For more information: www.nesfp.nutrition.tufts.edu.

With two recently confirmed cases in New England, here’s a reminder to be on the alert for Late Blight. Help us avoid the devastating effects of this disease by gardening responsibly — know where your plant material comes from, do not use volunteer tomato or potato seedlings that may have overwintered, and send suspected samples to the UNH Cooperative Extension. Learn more at the Cooperative Extension’s Late Blight update page:

Late blight has recently been detected on tomato in two New England greenhouses – one in Connecticut (late April) and one in Maine (last week).  In Connecticut, the source of the late blight is believed to be infected potatoes that were also growing in the greenhouse. In Maine, the disease appeared on volunteer tomato plants inside of a greenhouse that had previously had late blight. Both of these are likely isolated cases and have been contained, but these cases show that it is important to keep looking for symptoms of late blight on both potatoes and tomatoes.

 

Good resources for showing photos of symptoms along with detailed discussions of how to manage late blight include:

http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/factsheets/lateblight/late.htm

http://www.nysipm.cornell.edu/publications/blight/

 

If you suspect that the disease is present in any of your crops please mail or deliver a sample ASAP for professional diagnosis to your state’s Extension plant pathologist so we can track the disease. In NH mail to: Cheryl Smith, UNH Cooperative Extension Plant Diagnostic Lab, G37 Spaulding Hall, 38 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824. You can also phone the Plant Diagnostic Lab at 603-862-3200 or call your county UNH Cooperative Extension Office.

If you believe you have late blight on either tomato or potato, you may submit a sample free of charge. Write “late blight confirmation” on the top of the submittal form.

Also from Rodale: Tomato Blight 2011: Are You and Your Garden Ready for It?