Fat City Farms
501(c)3 Non-Profit
Board Meeting
– Conference Call
Tuesday
evening, January 29, 2008
Meeting Minutes
Attending:
Michael,
Susan, Katie, AJ, David;
Decisions
we need to
make are simple:
Who will
build the components of the Fat City Farms mission?
1>
Fat City Farms mission – dreams, goals;
a.
Promote local agriculture – how?
b.
David
- Partners – local producer network he is building with Edible
Aspen Magazine;
c.
Katie
- build gardens –school gardens, community gardens;
d.
AJ
- Education – combining resources and needs;
e.
David
– what CAN we do realistically?
2>
Community communication – website, outreach;
a.
MT
- Hosting events with partners, to raise awareness, have fun –
first a dinner meeting with partners
who created USDA Grant application (C.O.R.E.,
CRMPI, Sustainable Settings,
Creation
of a Local Food Abundance Network ;
b.
FCF as Community Facilitator – Educator,
opportunity liaisons, apply resources to needs, land,
enthusiasts;
c.
Schools – environmental education teachers:
1.
MT
to ask teachers Betsy McMichael and Andrea Chacos for names of
interested teachers in
Basalt,
Carbondale;
2.
Susan
has connections in Aspen and Carbondale Community Schools
(COMPASS), and
will contact
them to initiate participation;
3.
MT
SCoR connections – Doug? Gavin? New Carbondale Non-Profit
Center?
4.
David
- “Blueprint” for a garden? Jerome can help us create?
d.
Katie
has curriculum for winter food work, etc. – bring curriculum to
professional notebook format –
Katie will type,
AJ
will format, we can put it on our website and send it to
teachers in digital form;
e.
David
will talk to Patricia and Shere about focusing our website on
educational opportunities;
1.
We learned that current website music has no “off”
switch, making it difficult for some of us to
have it open, when using a phone – can’t hear
conference and music at the same time;
3>
Food producer network;
a.
David is already building with Edible Aspen – can
anybody help?
1.
MT
suggested that each of us who knows anyone producing food in the
valley to contact them,
and ask if they would be willing to participate in David’s
survey for Edible Aspen, then have David
talk with them (get contact info to David);
2.
If someone does NOT want to participate in survey,
and does not want to sell products to the
public, would they be willing to teach their passion to others,
perhaps potential commercial growers?
b.
Education program to encourage landowners to start
growing food?
4>
Food processing and distribution system;
a.
Meat Processing Plant for local ranchers and
consumers – how can we help facilitate this? Brook LeVann
already working on it – MT will contact Brook to ask how
a wider group might help make this happen;
5>
Food consumption network;
b.
Building clientele through website, once we have
all prior goals in place.
Meeting
commenced at 7:00 pm, and ended at 8:15 pm.
Next
meeting TBD. Conference Service (
www.instantconference.com ) was very poor for this
call. MT has experienced far better results with them, so
we should perhaps try again, and see if we have better
results. If anyone can suggest a better quality service, we
will try it.
Thank you all
for participating!
Michael
Thompson
==========================================================================================
Addendum to minutes:
I’ll summarize tonight’s meeting more completely than the
previous “minutes” did:
I came in feeling like we couldn’t get our website to a
publishable level without the very basic mission, and some
action to go with it. Are we selling food? We need a
network of willing producers and providers, which is still
in formation, primarily by David Bedford and the Edible
Aspen Magazine, before we’re ready to do that.
I summarized our activities in 2007, including difficulties
we had with a long-distance garden project, and questioned
everyone to re-state our mission. (see outline sent
earlier)
We focused on Katie’s successful establishment of a school
garden at the Middle School, across Maroon Creek Rd. from
the Rec.Center. She reminded us that it hasn’t seen its
first growing season yet, so don’t count success too soon!
We discussed education and collaboration as our primary
offerings, what we CAN do right now, and then what
opportunities we can make happen with them:
Establish school gardens at downvalley schools – contact
teachers, network with those interested, help them drum up
constituencies of teachers, parents, students, establish
garden plots and teach enthusiasts to grow them. Michael,
Susan, Katie have contacts and will call;
“Branch” out to encourage other groups to grow community
gardens elsewhere – Emma Open Space? Carbondale Non-Profit
Center? ACES Rock Bottom Ranch? The key is to first find
the groups of people who want to do it: (not all this was
discussed): Homeowners Associations? Churches? Caucuses?
(Woody Creek, Capitol Creek, Emma) Close-knit neighborhoods?
Parents of Students in school garden classes may carry us
into the above groups, where more land and effort might be
available;
We can all help David to build the Producer Network with
Edible Aspen magazine. Details for how to help in the
outline sent earlier;
We can host regular dinners, where we gather with others
from our partner groups, the people who are trying to create
similar opportunities: Slow Food, Sustainable Settings,
CRMPI, CORE, etc., and knit them together to build a
Local Food Abundance
Network – Where does Fat City Farms fit in?
“Educators and Collaborators” is what we collectively
thought we should be doing right now. We can add other
things to our mission later, as we decide.
Michael will establish a date with the collaborators on the
recent USDA Grant helpers for such a dinner.
Susan, Michael, Katie, will work on establishing network of
downvalley schools, and their environmental ed. teachers.
Let’s report back via email on progress, rather than waiting
for another meeting.
David will ask Patricia and Shere how they might want to
work together on building the website. AJ reminded us that
we have a lot of educational content on the existing site,
that can be used:
www.fatcityfarms.com
Katie asked for help formatting her school curriculum into a
digital document she could publish for teachers. It is all
in handwritten, notebook form now. AJ suggested he could
help, if Katie could type it all up, then he could edit and
format. We could make it a significant feature of the
website.
Thanks again, everyone.
Michael
Track the progress of our experimental “Apricot Blossom
Christmas Tree” still blooming and leafing! At:
http://s254.photobucket.com/albums/hh119/MPThompsonCO1/ChristmasApricotTree-2007/?action=view¤t=d49c3f92.pbw