Kickstarter

In case any of you are not connected to us on Facebook or via email we would love to see you all here:

Join this house party/barn dance/potluck to celebrate the first year of Beet Street Gardens (http://beetstreetdc.wordpress.com/) and donate to raise a (small) barn for the garden at Bruce House, a program of Sasha Bruce Youthworks (http://sashabruce.org/). The actual (quite small) barn raising* will be raised by volunteers in the spring, just before the planting season.

The party is Saturday, December 11th at 1412 Parkwood Pl NW. Potluck dinner at 7:00. Contra, two-step, square dancing, fire pit, and good company 'till late. Party will feature feature Scott Prouty on fiddle, Brad Park on banjo, and Brandt Ryder on guitar, and Gabe Popkins calling dances. A fire pit. Craft cocktail bartender David Fritzler will be mixing up historic cocktails. And rumor has it there may be a cake walk or two throughout the evening.

$10 suggested donation. No one turned away. All proceeds go to Beet Street.

There will be a fire pit on the porch, a keg of beer, and a pot of mulled wine. We will have Gabe Popkin calling dances and old timey tunes from local musicians.

All are welcome. RSVP on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php....

*A barn raising is an event during which a community comes together to assemble a barn for one or more of its households, common in 18th- and 19th-century rural North America.

Beet Street Gardens (http://beetstreetdc.wordpress.com/) is a community garden project at HIPS, Pathways to Housing and Sasha Bruce Youthwork. We are working to reduce the barriers of participants at these organizations to nutritious, affordable food and offering all the benefits of getting to know a garden.

Bruce House (http://bit.ly/588lAf) is a 10 room transitional shelter for teens. The house sits on a corner lot on Capitol Hill with about a half acre of potential magical garden space. This coming year we will hopefully expand to double the space for vegetables, as well as a berry patch, fruit trees and cut flowers. We’ll need lots of tools and somewhere to store them!!

Hi All, I apologize for being out of touch for far too long. The good news is that most of the reason I have been out of touch is that I have been so super busy getting this project off the ground and making the rest of my life fit in around the project. In trying to make this pull through this first challenging year I have severely neglected the public part of the project and keeping in touch with you all wonderful supporters. Anyway, now that the gardens are almost winterized and things will finally slow down a bit I hope to make it up to you by getting back in touch, catching you up on all the successes and challenges of this first year, and getting all the promised goodies headed your way soon.

I have finally posted the first of the Beet Street blog (which will serve as our website and public face for now). As you can see on the about page of this website Beet Street will be continuing on next year by seeking grants under the non-profit status of a partnering organization (known as a fiscal sponsorship). So, good news!! The first year has been deemed a success. I could, of course, never made this happen without your support. On the blog for now you will see an introductory post and over the coming weeks a retrospective of our first season--what I had hoped to have been sending you all along. If you have any questions about the project, ideas or want to give me a hard time about being out of touch please email: beetstreetdc@gmail.com

http://beetstreetdc.wordpress.com/

Here is a preview of posts to come:

David. Giving. Unexpected Gifts of the Garden.

We've spent a lot of time thinking about all of the benefits of the Beet Street gardens. Food, a peaceful space to build community, and on and on. Some of these benefits will take years to become real. Some of them came from day one. And one, we hadn't thought of, was happening right before our eyes without notice until one day this email came from a staff person at Pathways to Housing:

"Yesterday morning as I was approaching the office, I saw David with a garden hose. He jokingly acted as if he was going to spray me and then we began talking. He showed me all the different items hiding out in the leaves. He told me that some of the peppers are HOT and he picked off some green pepper to snack on. He then showed me this enormous piece of okra (honestly, never seen anything like it before) and when I admired it, he gave it to me. I saw flowers at our program assistant's desk, and I heard from Linda that he had given her a flower. I saw the value in the freedom of being able to give someone a gift."

David's first instinct, other than eating copious amounts of bell peppers, in interacting with the garden is to share it with everyone he can. He looked at the garden and saw gifts. He brought friends whom he had told about the garden so they could relax getting their hands into the soil. On the day pictured, he talked for an hour about all of the ways he thought he could help this garden and project grow. Before this email I had thought about the importance of ownership. I hadn't thought about the importance of taking what you own and giving it away.

There's a whole lot going on with Beet Street--which is why I haven't been doing a great job of updating. I'll be much better with this once we're through the big push of getting the gardens installed. First, an invite: HIPS is having an open house of their new space tomorrow evening.
I'll be there from 6-8pm to talk about the garden and show what we've done so far. If you're in the DC area and can make it come on by. It should be a great time. Here are the details.

HIPS OPEN HOUSE April 6, 4PM – 8PM Tours and 6PM reception
Because of recent snow storms we have re-scheduled our Open House for April 6th.

HIPS invites our partners, friends, family and the community to join us at our new location to celebrate HIPS new offices and drop in center!

Meet our staff, and learn more about HIPS work towards healthy lives and streets. Our address is 1309 Rhode Island Ave, NE Washington DC 20018 (But Please Note: HIPS' entrance is located on 14th St, NE behind the Brentwood Shopping Center. Look for the HIPS banner.

Please RSVP to Charisse-at-HIPS-dot-org

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An article about Beet Street Gardens came out today in the Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/04/AR2010040402690.html

If you're in DC it's in print on the front page of the metro section. The reason this article was written is because the reporter was interested in Kickstarter and saw the success Beet Street had on the site. So thanks for making this happen!

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Updates on the gardens:

HIPS--We've double dug four beds and planted several cool weather crops. HIPS clients are getting really excited about all the little seedlings coming up and the plants we've put in. People are starting to talk about all the lunches they can make with what everyone believes will be our very bountiful garden. We're working now to get a picnic bench and grill so daily lunches can happen right out in the garden!

Sasha Bruce--At the Bruce House we have prepared the largest of Beet Street's gardens. About 800 square feet. We'll be doing our first planting in the next week. On April 23rd Beet Street will be taking part in an event at Bruce House for Global Youth Volunteer Day. We'll be working out the garden, cooking out at the grill, Youth Build (a construction group of youth from Sasha Bruce) will be building a compost bench, local muralist Aniekan will be painting a mural on the basketball court that will incorporate themes of the garden and other SBY programs, and more...

Youth Build will also be constructing a raised bed for the second SBY garden at REACH within the next few weeks.

Pathways to Housing--We've built two raised beds at Pathways to Housing service site. This coming Wednesday we'll have the soil delivered and start our planting! This is the first priority for Pathways since their clients are spread throughout the city in different residences, but most all of them come through the service site throughout the week. After we have the garden off the ground at the service site we'll be doing Pathway's second garden at a single room occupancy housing building where 22 residents are living.

Here are pictures from our day building the beds at Pathways. Anthony, Andrew and I worked on the construction. And I talked with a couple of Pathways residents about what we'll grow in the bed--Wendell, who I'm talking to in the first photo, was extremely excited since he is big into cooking.

More updates soon...

Katie

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WE DID IT WE DID IT WE DID IT!!!

I really cannot express how amazed I am by the support you have all given me and this project. I am so motivated by the fact that so many people believe in this idea. The first few meetings with organizations have been amazing. The sites are fantastic--I can already picture these gardens in my mind. And most importantly--people are excited! Thank you all so so much for making this happen.

I thought I had already posted this link in an update but realized today I hadn't. We have a facebook page up and running. Please become a fan if you like. I'll be posting some updates on that page. Other updates will come directly to you through email if you have requested. We'll also have a website up and running soon. So stay tuned!

I'll be starting to organize volunteers in the coming weeks so please let me know if you are interested in participating in any capacity or if you'd like to visit one of the gardens at some time throughout the season.

Much Love,
Katie