Produce to the People Community Veggie Swap @ Secret Buddha Cafe

Launching on the 11th of February and to continue on the second second Saturday of the month  (unless we decide it needs to be run more often over the warmer more productive months!) you are invited to bring your bounty of backyard veg & swap with someone else at the Produce to the People Community Veggie Swap.

You might have tomatoes, someone else might have zucchinis. Lettuce for herbs, eggs for flowers, celery for spinach, home made preserves for manure? No money changes hands, this is produce for produce.

If there is nothing that takes your fancy consider donating it to Produce to the People!

Where:  Secret Buddha Cafe, 63 West Park Grove, Burnie

When:  Saturday, 11th February 9am – 11am

Call 0409 484 152 and we can have a chat if you need further info.

Happy 2012.

I am having such a super fantastic start to the year collecting lots of lovely backyard grown produce and of course mammoth amounts from Harvest Moon…So far broccoli and for the first time beans.  I have never seen so many beans in the one spot at the one time!

Wynyard Commonwealth Bank are leading the pack of veggie drop off spots with a bounty of zucchinis left in their vault.  I love withdrawing veggies from the bank! ( That’s Natrece from the bank in the photo at the top of the page handing over the zuc loot. )

Of course Schools are still on holiday so that has meant bigger bounties for others – Mission Gateway, Vinnies in Somerset, Burnie & Devonport Community Houses and the Burnie and Ulverstone Salvos have had lots of lovely produce, it is always so enthusiastically received. I love delivering veggies!

With the end of the Green Jobs Crew it means solo deliveries at present but I have had some lovely offers of assistance which will be taken up shortly. A big thanks must go to Fiona and Rob who have been looking after the Somerset Primary School Snack Gardens – what a blessing.

When I am not delivering veggies I am furiously writing grant applications – not my most favourite thing but a necessity.

So much to do, so many great ideas,  I can’t wait to get some more $$ in the bank to be able to get everything happening. I would like the success rate of grant applications to equal the abundance of produce grown, gathered and given.

That is one of my 2012 P to the P resolutions.

Back to it!  Cheers for now.

 

 

 

End of year ponderings

 

Wishing you all a vey happy end of 2011.  I do hope it has been a wonderful year.

I have been looking back over the past twelve Produce to the People months….

Highs

• Partnership with Harvest Moon who have donated HUGE amounts of vegetables to us. We have been averaging 2000 kilos a month lately.
• 2 years ongoing funding from the State Government. Would have been nice to get some State wide equity in terms of how the money was distributed, but if it wasn’t for that $30K Produce to the People would no longer exist in its current form.
• Green Jobs Crew who helped put in snack gardens, helped to deliver hundreds of kilos of veggies and made soup for weeks and weeks at the Burnie Community House
• Soup making at Burnie Community House
• Snack gardens at Leighlands Christian School and Somerset Primary – and finding Christian to look after the Snack Gardens
• Meeting Kay from The Big Feed and a grand new partnership born
• Spending time with Costa at the Penguin Sustainable Living Festival
• That HUGE van load of zucchinis at the beginning of the year!
• Mason’s Sign Worx who kindly sign writing the van – everyone knows where I go
• And of course the NW community at large who have embraced Produce to the People and feeding each other.

Lows

• Green Jobs Crew finishing up.  What are we all going to do without these lovely chaps to help our organisations?
• Grant writing.  I am so over writing grant applications.  They take up enormous amounts of time, there is no guarantee of a return on your investment, funders want you to collaborate yet put you in competition with each other.  Ba humbug!  Of course I will have to write more to grow the project….

Frivolities

• Jamie Durie’s Outdoor Room – yes we got a mention in one of the most short lived mags of all time!
• Country Style – look out for the January 2012 (actually out today) issue for lots of NW Tassie love and a little PTTP mention

The Future…….

Will be pondered on over the end of year break.

Let’s just say there could be lots happening in 2012 with some very interesting plans, partnerships and possibilities.

Remember if you are on Facebook to go and like us there.  I update goings on much more often and post lovely pics.  If twitter is more your style, we can also be found there @pttptasmania

I hope I haven’t forgotten anything significant??

Now I am off on a little end of year adventure……….Talk to you again in 2012.

PS: Donated veggie total for December 1545 kilos 

 

 

 

Want to share some Snack Garden love?

Here is scathingly brilliant way for businesses to collaborate with their local school or child care centre…

Business sponsors snack garden crate in school and claims it as a tax deductable gift….(look at all that lovely space to pop your logo on the side of the crate!) You might also like to help out via corporate volunteerism?

Local school maintains a fabulous resource that provides learning opportunities and fresh grown produce to students!

“Establishing the Snack Gardens at our school has been a wonderful decision for these key reasons:

A snack garden provides:

• valuable outdoor experience for the children
• an excellent way to promote healthy eating habits
• opportunity for children to experience  different foods
• team building  opportunities
• a way for children to gain an insight into the benefits of gardening
• a way to understand how plants grow, what they need and ways to encourage growth in plants
• cooking experiences with the harvested food

It has been a very positive experience for the students from Kindergarten through to year 6. Some children have been directly involved in the garden planting while other grades have awaited tasting times!  Total number of student involved has been 127 .”

Produce to the People Tasmania links schools and business and does the hard work of putting the crates in place.

We hope that this venture will be so popular that it creates enough work for us to employ one of the Green Jobs Corp graduates.

Win, win, win, win!

We currently have a wait list for six crates ready to be sponsored.  Can you help? Go ask the boss right now!

More information can be found on the Snack Garden page…

 

 

November grown, gathered, given tally….

Busy, busy……

2332 kilos of vegetables

5  dozen eggs

Delivered to 20 different agencies, community houses & primary schools along the NW Tassie Coast.

Hundreds of people fed.

Rock. And. Roll.

What a month!

October has been a massive month for Produce to the People Tasmania. We have gathered and given a total of 2187 kilos of fresh produce + a delightful 4 dozen eggs.

We now give this produce to a combination of 19 different agencies, schools, shelters and community houses stretched out along the North West Coast feeding hundreds of people each week.

We could not do this without the massive support of Harvest Moon.  I seriously can not praise them enough.  Every week we go out to their HQ in Forth and collect crate after crate of produce.  Produce that would otherwise go to waste.  The staff there are all awesome.  So genuinely friendly, willing to help and interested in what we are doing. Todd, in particular is our go to guy…

We are also continuing our work on School Snack Gardens.  The delightful Christian has come on board and is actively exciting staff and students alike with his genuine enthusiasm for this project.  We are on the cusp of announcing a very exciting way business can become involved in this valuable work.  Watch this space!

Somerset Primary School : snack garden circled, top left

To top it all off, we are now starting to receive excess backyard grown produce as well…the scent from these lemons left at Bruce’s cafe in Wynyard for us was just divine!

Sadly the count down has begun with the Green Jobs Crew…December is too close.

We seriously can’t wait to see what November has in store.  As always, there are many ways you can help.  Just click your way to our “feel good” page to find out how you can participate.

The time has come to volunteer!

What a busy September and October! With the next few months promising to be bigger & brighter.

We have begun another wonderful Burnie Community House collaboration with a gardening group at the Burnie Community House (we meet on the second Thursday of the month at 10am) which, a little further down the track, will morph into a cooking group as well.

We are receiving an amazing bounty of produce from Harvest Moon and donated backyard garden produce will kick in shortly.  School Snack Gardens are being planted out….things are looking G.O.O.D!

We have also increased the number of places we deliver this donated produce to.  Last count there are 16 – a combination of different agencies, community houses, schools, shelters & assisted living houses.  What a huge difference it is making to so many people.

On a slightly scary note, the Green Jobs Crew finish in December…..the last ever of this program as it is not being refunded by the Federal Government, which means it is back to a solo operation. Whatever will I do without these fine lads?

Want to be help??

Please, head over to the “feel good” page and you will find lots of lovely ways to volunteer with Produce to the People and also a bit of a wish list.

Introducing……..our new Snack Garden Guru

Chuffed.  That is what I am at present.  Chuffed, chuffed, chuffed that Christian has joined us for the next six months as our Snack Garden Guru.

Christian will spend one day a week visiting schools and child care centres where we currently have a Snack Garden in place.  Hopefully this will lead to more Snack Gardens in more places as well!

Watch this space…….we have a plan and it’s going to be awesome!

Check out the T is for Team page for more info about Mr Parr.

Good news!!

I am pleased to let you know that we have received two years ongoing funding from the State Government to continue to work of Produce to the People Tasmania in the north west of the State. This funding will help us to continue our core work of collecting produce and redistributing it along the coast to families in need. Yippee!

There is also some very exciting news of the Snack Garden front. I’m bursting to tell you but I’m going to make you wait just a little bit longer!!

Go forth and enjoy this beautiful sunshine…..who knows how long it will last!

Schmoozing…

The Burnie Green Jobs Corp crew, ably led in the schmoozing department by crew member Jonathon spent the morning at the Burnie Community House where they got to meet and talk and have a photo opp with Premier Lara Giddings…

and Brenton Best, Member for Braddon and current Parliamentary Secretary for the North West Economy

followed by a spot of soup making….

However will we top that?