Not whiskey... syrup!

Our family-style (or neighborhood-style) pancake breakfast was a success! Sunday lived up to its name and we had at least 40 neighbors and friends of neighbors sitting at our improvised banquet table. And Sam’s syrup was a hit! Yeah Maple trees!

Pancake Breakfast!

The neighborhood eats pancakes

Blocksteady is hosting the  Lynn Street Syrup Pancake Potluck party this Sunday May 3, 10 am -12noon in the driveway of 912 S Lynn St.  We will provide pancakes and micro-local syrup, you provide a plate, a snack, and a smile. Details below in the awesome flier designed by Sarah R. and Sam V.

GARAGE & PLANT SALE TO SUPPORT THE HOME BIRTH SAFETY ACT

This two-day garage and plant sale is a fundraiser to help support HB 226 which: “Creates the Home Birth Safety Act. Provides for the licensure of midwives by the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. Creates the Illinois Midwifery Board. Sets forth provisions concerning qualifications, grounds for disciplinary action, and administrative procedures. Imposes conditions on any rulemaking authority…” and in general gives people greater freedom to have safe births at home if they choose to do so. Come by and get some good deals, pick up some plants for your garden, and support home birthing in Illinois. If you wish to sell plants, want to help
with the sale, or have any other questions call Sarah at 384-0429. Thank you!

NEIGHBORHOOD FARM EMERGES: TAPPING MAPLE TREES IN URBANA
Late this winter, Sam Vandegrift (known as the winepunk on www.smilepolitely.com) and his daughter Mamie tapped several maple trees on Lynn St. and Fairlawn Dr. in Pre-Historic East Urbana. Their efforts created a buzz among the neighbors. Sam and Mamie collected over 100 hundred gallons of sap, which boiled down, after a lot of hard work, to two gallons of maple syrup. Sam is a part of a loose knit, growing group of neighbors that are raising and sharing vegetables together and advocating for a more exciting, mutually beneficial engagement with food and our neighborhoods. Garage & Garden is a part of this growing cooperation and is pleased to host an exhibition documenting (photos by Sarah Ross) the tapping of our neighborhood trees. Sam will give a short talk on Saturday at 2 PM.

WATER WORKSHOP
This workshop is a general introduction to sustainable home water use and awareness. We will discuss greywater, blackwater, rainwater harvesting, composting urinals & urine fertilizer, groundwater, aquifers, municipal code, the inefficiencies and wastefulness of privatized water, and more. Participants will make their own greywater sand filters for
home and apartment use. They will also receive a small booklet that covers the topics of the workshop and
has resources for further water explorations. If you want to attend the water workshop, you must sign
up at the Common Group Food Coop, in Lincoln Square Mall, Urbana. To sign up, stop by the
store or email meagan@commonground.coop. Cost of the workshop is $20 for owners and
$40 for non-owners. Space is limited. Contact the Common Ground for date and time.

What's Growin' On

Or scrappier ones like I made from wood and windows I got out of dumpsters and alleys:

I put mulch and compost around the cold frame to both generate heat and to provide some insulation against colder temperatures. I have plans to make a much hardier system this fall complete with walls insulated with packaging styrofoam.

Here are some more of our cold frames:

Salad greens, collards, kale and mustard greens

And here is an even scrappier design for a planter:

Planter in front of the Harvest House on Washington in Urbana

I really like this design as it suggests a really easy way of making a planter with out the need to have access to a lot of tools or basic wood working skills. It looks as if the wood was found and fitted together to make the planter. It could easily be made into a cold frame by placing windows on top or by stretching clear plastic over it.

Here is what you need to make a basic cold frame:

Window found in alley, wood pulled from a dumpster

I cut the boards with a power saw (a hand held saw works just as well) to the same lengths as the sides of the windows making sure to cut two of the sides a little smaller in relation to the thickness of the other boards.

Assembled frame

I affixed the pieces of wood together with wood glue (which really helps keep the wood together as it will be on, and holding, wet, moist ground) and screws (long nails will work too).

Frame placed, filled with soil

Next, find a location for your cold frame. I put soil in mine after digging up the grass underneath. The soil in our yard is poor. We have not spent the time and effort to get the soil in this spot in good condition for growing healthy plants. You might want to consider putting good top soil into your frame if you have a similar situation.

Carrots planted. Window placed.

The final steps are to plant the cold frame – I put carrots in this one – and water the seeds, finally placing the window on top of the frame

You can see the cold frame in action within just a few minutes; condensation starts to appear on the underside of the window.

Tapped silver maple tree

The second tapped silver maple

Our neighbor and collaborator – working with Block by Block Cooperation to increase ultra-local food production in our hood – the Wine Punk (aka Sam Vandegrift), tapped the two silver maple trees in our (Let’s Re-Make) front yard this week as well as many other trees in the neighborhood. Sam identified over 30 trees in a 3-block area to tap and collect the sap from. It is really amazing to see all the trees with gallon milk jugs hanging off of antique taps. The sap wasn’t what I expected. It was colorless and had no flavor. It flowed as soon as a hole was made in the tree.  Sam’s efforts have created a bit of a buzz among our neighbors, which is exactly what we wanted to happen.

As the sap is being collected, he will boil it down to make maple syrup. We are currently planning a pancake breakfast in Sam’s driveway once the weather permits. More images and pancake breakfast details coming in future posts.

We hope to increase our activities in the next months, bringing greater visibility to food and infrastructure issues in order to slowly transform how we, and our neighbors, think about our living and shared spaces, and how they can function in new ways.

Block by block cooperation!