Women's Environmental Institute Update on Hoops House Project
WEI continues its collaboration with Will Allen and his Growing Power, Inc. team to build hoop houses in the Twin Cities. Since hoop houses in Minnesota are able to significantly extend the growing season in this state, this project remains an important program for ongoing development in the spring and fall of each year.
For spring 2013, WEI is in need of additional resources to assist the following projects to complete their hoop house plans:
1) The Women's Environmental Institute (WEI) continues to work with Little Earth of United Tribes (LEOUT) housing complex to create its own urban farm. The hoop house we helped them to construct (in partnership with the Little Earth Teen Youth program and with support from the Minneapolis Community Action Agency) suffered from vandalism to the plastic cover and is in the process of repair in order to accomplish its intended purpose. Once the installation of the fence deemed necessary by the Little Earth community to better protect their entire urban farm space has been completed, our technical engineer consultant, Charley Hatch, will begin work to re-install a new covering that will allow the tomatoes, pepper, and herbs thriving within to have an extended season. Repair supplies have been purchased. As final funding is being sought for the fence and its gates, we are hopeful that can be accomplished by mid or late October. In the meantime, a re-invigorated residential compost project has taken shape at Little Earth and will be part of generating new soil for the farm. Six new compost bins were constructed and 40 residents, including children and youth participated in their installation. WEI has begun a series of 15 weekly farm training classes on site at Little Earth in order further develop their strong farm team, including the compost and hoop house growing opportunities. All await the new Little Earth Farm fence so the hoop house can be re-covered.
2) The 24th St. Urban Farm Homestead that WEI helped create in coalition with Indigenous People’s Task Force, Ventura Village, Native American Community Clinic, Waite House, Indian Health Board and Dream of Wild is preparing to build its hoop house this year. In spring 2012, WEI participated with the coalition members to build a raised bed farm garden in the shape of a turtle on land hosted by the Indian Health Board. We recently received funding for a shared farmer to work with the Latino farm project and the 24th Street Farm. About 2/3’s of the funds to build the hoop house for the 24th St. Urban Farm coalition have been raised and the final issue being addressed is its exact site location. Until the City of Minneapolis decides on the status of the adjacent site we are seeking, we may build a small hoop house on the Indigenous People’s Task Force land. WEI's engineer will work with youth pre-apprentices who will learn how to construct it. The growers at this urban farm are part of the Community Food Justice Council, created as collaboration between WEI and the Environmental Justice
3) As a result of the 2013 Growing Power training conference, WEI expects to be invited to help build hoop houses in several additional urban areas. One may be with school children at Harmony School. One may be with Hope Community gardens. Each of these groups sent staff and community participants to the training and will be seeking funding.
In collaboration with Will Allen and his Growing Power, Inc. team, WEI has trained another highly motivated group of hoop house builders. Fifteen individuals participated in the basic hoop house construction workshop of WEI’s Third Annual Growing Power Training weekend at our Amador Hill campus September 15-16, 2012. Some of these individuals came from organizations just beginning to try urban farming and others came from more established groups WEI has been mentoring who want to continue to develop their urban community or small rural farms. In the workshop they gained the hands-on skills needed to construct a hoop house from the ground up – from the hand-bending the hoops to the final covering of the structure. (The result can be seen in the accompanying photo collage from the workshop.) The important purpose of such hoop houses in Minnesota is that they can significantly extend the growing season for our urban and rural farms—both in the spring and fall. WEI’s hoop house project is going forward, though slowed by funding shortages in the following examples. In each of these cases, WEI is in need of additional funding resources to assist the projects to complete their hoop house plans:
1) The Women's Environmental Institute (WEI) has continued to work with Little Earth of United Tribes (LEOUT) housing complex to create its own urban farm. The hoop house we helped them to construct (in partnership with the Little Earth Teen Youth program and with support from the Minneapolis Community Action Agency) two years ago suffered from major vandalism to the plastic cover and is in the process of getting repaired in order to accomplish its intended purpose. Repair supplies have been purchased and our technical engineer consultant, Charley Hatch, has been hired to re-install a new covering that will allow the tomatoes, pepper and herbs thriving within to have an extended season. We await, however, the installation of a fence that Little Earth has decided is needed to better protect their entire urban farm space. As final funding is being sought for the fence and its gates, we are hopeful that can be accomplished by mid or late October. The gap in funding is $1500-$2000. In the meantime, a re-invigorated residential compost project has taken shape at Little Earth and will be part of generating new soil for the farm. Six new compost bins were constructed and 40 residents, including children and youth participated in their installation. WEI has begun a series of 15 weekly farm training classes on site at Little Earth in order further develop their strong farm team, including the compost and hoop house growing opportunities. All await the new Little Earth Farm fence so the hoop house can be re-covered.
2) The 24th St. Urban Farm Homestead that WEI helped create in coalition with Indigenous People’s Task Force, Ventura Village, Native American Community Clinic, Waite House, Indian Health Board and Dream of Wild is preparing to build its hoop house this fall. This spring, WEI participated with these coalition members to build a raised bed farm garden in the shape of a turtle on land at IHB hosted. We have been working with Waite House to apply for funding for a shared farmer—their Latino farm project and the 24th St. Farm hope to share one full time farmer. We will hear about whether we received that funding in October. About 2/3’s of the funds to build the hoop house for the 24th St. Urban Farm coalition have been raised and the final issue being addressed where the exact site for locating it should be. WEI's technical engineer will work with youth pre-apprentices who will get training in how to construct it and participants in the recent Growing Power Training on hoop houses will assist. The growers at the 24th St. Farm Coaliton are part of the Community Food Justice Council, created as collaboration between WEI and the Environmental Justice Advocates of MN and most of them attended the September workshop on scholarships that WEI soliticted.
3) As a result of the 2012 Growing Power training conference, WEI expects to be invited to help build several more hoop houses in the Twin Cities metropolitan urban area. One may be with school children at Harmony School and one or more may be with Hope Community gardens. Each of these groups sent staff and community participants to the Growing Power training and will be seeking construction funding. WEI is committed to utilizing our Global Giving Hoop House donations for the purposes described above. Please give generously and we will ensure you get a chance to see photos of both the structures and the great impact on local and sustainable urban organic production you will have helped to create. Even better, we would invite you to visit and taste the bounty!
1) The Women's Environmental Institute (WEI) has worked with Little Earth of United Tribes (LEOUT) housing complex to create its own urban farm over the last three years, including a hoop house. This farm is being built on reclaimed land that was once a high school and then became state highway right-of-way land. The land has since been ceded to LEOUT. The Little Earth farm is one of the first to have its own hoop house in South Minneapolis. It was constructed in a partnership between WEI and the Little Earth Youth Program. The Minneapolis Community Action Agency funded WEI's engineer, Charlie Hatch, to mentor and instruct 12 - 15 Little Earth teens to build the hoop house using the method we train with from Will Allen's Growing Power, Inc. They bent the hoops and built it from the ground up. It helped greatly extend the 2011 growing season at Little Earth, allowing them to eat and market some of the latest locally grown organic herbs, tomatoes, and peppers in the city.
2) This past year, the Women's Environmental Institute has helped pull together a local coalition, now known as the 24th St. Urban Farm, that will be the construction site of our second South Minneapolis hoop house. This urban farm is part of an Indigenous Native American, Latino and African immigrant cultural wellness corridor that is emerging in South Minneapolis. In the 2011 growing season, youth from the Indigenous People's Task Force worked with adult mentors to construct raised beds for this urban farm that included a base of wood chips and compost built in the shape of sun-rays. WEI contributed organically grown seedlings. The farm is being created above ground that is likely to be contaminated (as is most inner city urban land in the U.S.) so we use the Growing Power, Inc. model, growing on raised beds and developing composting to create new safe and enriched soil. This Spring, the seeds for the 24th St. Urban Farm will be started in one of the hoop houses at WEI’s rural Amador Hill farm campus and then transplanted. We will be building the 24th St. Hoop House this summer, funds pending, and WEI's engineer will work with youth pre-apprentices who will learn how to construct it. The growers at this urban farm are part of the Community Food Justice Council, created as a collaboration between WEI and the Environmental Justice Advocates of MN with support from a USDA funded grant.
3) Pershing Park Urban Farm in South Minneapolis will most likely be the site of WEI's third hoop house constructed in Minneapolis. For the past several years Pershing Park has incorporated a local foods program into its Rec Plus after school and summer program. This year Rec Plus is hoping to construct a hoop house with youth learning to do the construction from scratch alongside WEI's engineer/instructor. This will bring Pershing Park's youth gardening curriculum to the cutting edge of the city's local food production efforts. Pershing's Rec Plus program has incorporated the Green Thumbs program into the everyday activities of its 6-12 year old participants. With a hoop house on site Pershing Park hopes to significantly expand on its"garden to snack" program by extending the growing season. Kids, parents and neighbors have all been brought together in this exciting community building project. Funding support for this program would mean that the Pershing Park will be able to model unique youth programming that has the potential to extend into neighborhood parks throughout Minneapolis with other youth gardening programs.
4) WEI expects to construct a fourth hoop house with the North Minneapolis urban farm known as Kwansa Community Church Urban Farm. It is also a part of the Community Food Justice Program that is a partnership between WEI and EJAM. Kwanza will partner with St. James Community Church farm to build and operate the hoop house for their mutual benefit, including extending the season to grow culturally traditional African American foods for community consumption, for processing into various products and for farmer's market sales. This will build upon the non-toxic and natural cosmetic products that one Kwanza member created and marketed last year including lip balm and lotion using herbs from the farm.
5) WEI will consider constructing a fifth hoop house in North East Minneapolis with the McKinley Urban CSA Farm. Construction funds will be needed to create this opportunity.
6) Contact has also been made with the Apple Valley School of Environmental Studies to build a hoophouse in their Partnership Garden, and several other metro community gardening/farming groups. We are excited about pressing forward to create sustainable, organic local food hubs that can continue to provide fresh produce even during the cold winter months of Minnesota. Hoop houses heated with hot compost and solar energy are parts of WEI's vision for these neighborhood based food justice projects.
Links:
