Summary of the Transition Food Committee Meeting Oct 27 2013

Transition Food Committee Meeting Oct 27 2013

It was good to visit with you all on Sunday at Patricia’s Romney home; Patricia, thank you so much for having us, and for your delicious refreshments. After going over some of our interests and perceived needs, we established some action items, with some persons agreeing to do some research, etc.

Following is a list of those I recall. Please let me know if I miss or misstate any, or if you can think of any we should be considering. Also, if you know of others who would like to be a part of this committee, please let us know, or give them my email so they can get on the list.

• Facilities—continue to look into use of Hamp Coop building, and permanent meeting place; [coordinate with the] Steering Committee

• Expo/locavor project—we decided to put this on hold since it is a major project and would require many hands, and it would be months before we can do such a project, and it needs much more research before then.

• Extension office—Windy will contact Steve, and look into possibilitiy of working with CEOs, consider other local resources

• School programs—Erin will contact local high school re vo ag program, and how we could coordinate with them and their students



• Community gardens—we discussed a couple of possibilities in Romney, but haven’t settled on an action item yet, or a person responsible

• Local individual gardens—discussed setting up a program whereby we can help individuals get started on their own gardens, no action item or responsible person yet

• Canning and cooking—Dorothy is going to look into local Ruritan Clubs and Fire Depts for possibilities for demonstrations, canning/cooking events

• Winter food storage—Root Cellaring, pits, etc. Alaria is going to contact people about this, and perhaps invite them to do a presentation for a meeting

• Beekeeping, Mason bees—Patricia will talk with a local beekeeper about a presentation, and about setting out beehives on local properties; Windy will bring info about Mason bees

• Farmers’ Market—Dale will talk with Farmers’ Market manager about how to expand the market, how we can help, etc.

• Permaculture—Andy, would you be willing to do a presentation for one of our meetings about Permaculture design?

• Education—public showing of documentaries, articles for newspaper, etc. Dale is looking into possibility of library use for documentaries

• Meat processing—Dale has been researching local processing plants; we also talked about small-scale processing and mobile processing possibilities

• Lending Library—among us we have many books and documentaries that we could share with one another

• Meeting schedule—we will plan to have interim committee meetings between regular monthly transition meetings, as well as to make presentations at the regular meetings