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| Celebrating Community (in 2020)
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| Celebrating through Sharing
Fall has officially arrived! Even without a cue from our calendars, the showy goldenrod and shorter days are clear signals that the world is shifting away from a season of abundant production into a season of dormancy and storing up. Just ask the squirrels: doesn’t fall mean gathering and celebrating the harvest? But what happens to community when isolation and division seem to be running wild?
It turns out community persists, even grows stronger. We asked some of our partners for their definition of community, and on top of just being an inspiring and insightful expression of human potential, the list shows that in many ways, we’ve become more connected as a community during 2020. What makes a community? A community shares. Holy pumpkins! We have so much to share with each other!
Read below about the ways we at CFI are sharing -- plus we've included more gorgeous photos. Thank you for sharing, too. We are so grateful!
Joy and gratitude abundant as goldenrod,
The CFI team
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| What's Sprouting with School Gardens
School is back in session and so are our Sprouts School Garden lessons! It's a little lonely without kids to help us harvest for Donation Station, but we are adapting. While in a perfect world we would be physically taking students out to engage in hands-on lessons, for now these lessons are being done virtually. We’re sharing “tours” of what's growing in their school gardens, fun activities, packets of materials to garden at home, “virtual field trips” to local farms and more! The Sprouts curriculum enhances school learning standards with knowledge of where food comes from, our environment, and sustainable agriculture. We’re building connections between healthy bodies and gardens, increasing students’ exposure to locally grown foods, and transferring skills and knowledge to home and their communities. Click here to view an example of one of the introductory videos!
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| Donation Station During ...2020
The enormous outpouring of community support in response to COVID-19 has continued, allowing Donation Station to greatly increase both our investment in our local food system and the amount of food we’ve distributed this growing season. Thanks to new and old collaborations, plus an awesome continued partnership with Rural Action, we’ve expanded our distribution to reach a wider geographic area and serve more families. Our goal is to maintain this new network, and we’ve had requests for more expansion next season. Your continued support makes all of this possible! You fill our crates with veggies and our hearts with gratitude!
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| Announcing New Gear!
CFI has new apparel! We have sweatshirts, tanks, and t-shirts featuring a garlic scape to represent the work we do building community resilience at a holistic, systems level -- root to seed. You can buy gear at our Donation Station booth at the Athens Farmers Market (Wednesdays and Saturdays, 9am-noon), place orders at market, or order via our website. Trucker caps and beanies coming soon! Click here to order from our website. Place orders by October 24 to receive orders by November 6.
All clothing is sourced from a WRAP certified participating company of the Fair Labor Association. WRAP certification includes commitment to environmentally conscious practices, prohibition of discrimination, prohibition of child labor, and other commitments to humane, eco-friendly practices, and printed in Athens County.
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| What's Coming Up
Root to Seed: CFI Food Justice Podcast
We’re thrilled to be launching our new food justice podcast, Root to Seed! So many of us are experiencing resistance to the forced disconnect we’ve endured over the past few months; these recordings will feature meaningful conversation about how we come together around the work of building community resilience and social justice through supporting our food system, especially when global events threaten to divide us. In these recorded conversations we'll learn about the essential partnerships that make this work happen, and dig into what motivates us. First episode airing in October! Don’t miss it!
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| What Else?
How many flowers does one honey bee visit in her lifetime? How many acorns fall from an oak tree? There's always more than we can share here, and we want to hear from you, too! Stay in touch on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
Take care, stay safe, keep sharing.
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