Retail Construction Services Giving Garden

Neighbors, Christmas Trees and Pine Needle Fun

2011-11-23T13:46:00.035-06:00

Click to enlarge any photo
.... more pictures at the end of this article

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery ….. and if you want to unload Christmas trees, call over a group of energetic, fun loving employees who already have the holiday spirit! That’s exactly what Neil and Deb Krueger from Krueger’s Christmas Tree Farm did.

At least twice a year, the Krueger’s have made their way over to our Giving Garden to plow and turn it under. In exchange, we have had a standing offer to help them with any projects where help is needed.

This past week we received a call from Neil asking if we had staff that could come over and help unload trees over the next couple days. They had two semi-trucks arriving late afternoon on both days and I believe we unloaded 640 trees on Tuesday and well over 500 on Wednesday! We all smelled of fresh pine needles, learned that hand sanitizer removed sap from not only skin, but clothing too, and I think many of us were still finding stray pine needles this week! We had a great time, and as is the nature of our staff, shouting out the count of each tree as it came off the truck and the placement of them turned into something resembling Monty Python or a Saturday Night Live skit...!

Curt hiding out....!~

Below is a note we received from Neil and Deb:

“Hello Joni and crew at Retail Construction!-- Wow! We were so surprised and blessed with all the help from your whole crew last week! We hoped for just a few people to come down and help...but about 8 people came down the first day and helped us unload two huge trucks of Christmas trees! We all unloaded those trucks in under 45 minutes, which is a new world record! The second day, about 15 people showed up to help unload yet another truck! We couldn't believe that you all came to help us twice!

We never could have believed such kindness and generosity from our neighbors "up the road". It certainly was a humbling experience, after unloading trees for forty years, to stand back and watch someone else do it. Everyone sure seemed to laugh, work, and have fun together. I've never heard of anyone enjoying themselves unloading trees!

We hope that we can bring up a tree and a wreath for your lobby next week as a small token of our appreciation for all you've done.

You have touched us and we are grateful. Thank you all again! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!!

Neil and Deb Krueger - Krueger's Christmas Trees of Lake Elmo”

Thank you Neil and Deb for all you do… You know people had fun when they ask if we could make it an annual tradition to help unload those trees.... the answer... "YES"! See you next year!

ATruck 1/2 unloaded

Scarecrow Bob

2011-11-09T15:30:00.033-06:00

We received word from Tammy Palmer with the Stillwater SPIN Program that a group of students had “made something to put in the garden”. What could this surprise be?

So yesterday I paid a visit to the school to find out what surprise they made for the garden. To my delight, this creative group of students made “Scarecrow Bob”! They were so excited to share information; how they assembled him, how he was laid-out on a table like they were doing surgery, how he was stuffed and put together. I enjoyed watching the expressions on their faces as they each added to the conversation, layers and layers and layers of talking, laughing and explaining with show-in-tell demonstrations. They pointed out that each student had also signed Scarecrow Bob’s straw hat and on the front they wrote: Property of Scarecrow Bob. As a final touch, the students put a shiny metal tape with Bob’s name on the front pocket of his flannel shirt.

Back L to R: Dylan, Charlie, Sydney, Olivia, Hannah, Megan.
Front L to R: Jane, Tatiana, Lindsay, and Sara
(Click to enlarge photo)

I asked where in the garden we should put him in the spring. Someone said “In the corn of course!”… However, the corn moves every year. We all agreed that Scarecrow Bob deserves the center of attention and he will be placed in the middle of the garden for all to see. This spring we will construct a support stand to keep Scarecrow Bob standing tall for all to see as they visit the garden.

In exchange for the garden gift, I left this group with fresh apple cider and apples from a local orchard. They had one extra jug of cider that they were going to freeze and save for a celebration they were having on the 28th of this month.

Before leaving, one student told me to “remember to buckle him in!” With that in mind, since Scarecrow Bob weighs less than 40 lbs, I put him in the back seat, and secured him for the ride home, and then back to the office. (there is a photo of him in the back seat of the car in the movie at the end of this story) I have to say, riding with a Scarecrow in the back seat was quite funny… more than one car would slow down next to me and then pass by after exchanging a big smile. I had to ask myself if perhaps they thought this was my attempt at an extra passenger to use the ride share lanes!

Scarecrow Bob is now home at Retail Construction Services. As we wait for that first blanket of white to cover the garden, we look forward to enjoying the quiet peace this time of year brings. With Scarecrow Bob as our new garden guardian angel, and his rags of love to flap in the breeze, we are sure to have an amazing year of produce to come!

“For I consider brains far superior to money in every way. You may have noticed that if one has money without brains, he cannot use it to his advantage; but if one has brains without money, they will enable him to live comfortably to the end of his days.”

― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Solar in the Garden

2011-11-04T08:07:00.001-05:00

Our Giving Garden took on a new look this fall! With the partnership with Able Energy Co., RCS installed solar, not only power our corporate office, but to put energy back into the grid for our friends and neighbors in the community when we generate more than we use. We will have a live feed appearing on our website after November 4th. This live feed will display our energy production and usage. Please visit: http://www.retailconstruction.com/ go to the "CSR" page and the live feed will be on the lower right hand side of the page. Please also visit: http://www.rcsrenewableenergy.blogspot.com/ for more information about the type of solar we installed.

This Shed.....

2011-11-01T12:40:00.002-05:00

Marv Newville
(Click to enlarge photo)

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. We can do no great things, only small things with great love.

- Mother Teresa

This shed…

Over the past year this garden shed has come together in bits and pieces. Bits and pieces of not only reused and re-purposed material, but bits and pieces of volunteer time as well. A foundation here, a frame there, doors fit into place… windows, a floor, a roof… a few more nails, some caulking, and a fresh coat of paint.

This has not only been a collaboration of employee time and talent, but also a generous donation by a partner company, Newville Construction Co., Inc. Russ Newville had stopped by the office and said that they wanted to donate 3 to 4 days of labor to do whatever we needed to complete the shed. Marv Newville has been here doing just that. He has added trim, cedar shakes, power washed, is painting, and will also be setting up a seedling shelf as well as adding some window boxes to put herbs in for the 2012 season.

While the end result of this shed doesn’t bring food to the tables of those whose need is so great, it does much more. Each garden tool, well worn garden glove and row marker not only hold the stories of seasons past, they hold the stories of seasons to come and the promise of what this garden has yet to produce; not only in fresh food, but in producing compassion, comradeship and in the lesson that the greater pleasure in life lies in the art of giving rather than receiving.

Thank you to all of our employees who have helped out on this project over the past year, and a huge thank you to Marv, Russ and Melanie Newville for their generous gift of materials, time and talent.

"Thank You"

(Click to enlarge photo)

St. Croix Valley ALC Breaks Daily Record with 292lbs!

2011-09-15T15:32:00.025-05:00

AM Group L to R: Jackson Maier, Max Christenson,
Andrea Kasinak, Coner Patterson, Henry Simmons
(click to enlarge)

PM Group L to R: Oscar Berry, Joe McKinley, Tom Wendt,
David Meyer, Emily Faust, Sam Thomson, Mikalah Moreno,
and Taylor McDonough (click to enlarge)

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

~William James

As a garden so often does, it teaches us, every day, and today there was a lesson learned from this early frost. Upon arriving at the garden this morning and seeing the blanket of white, it would have so been easy to throw up my hands and start cutting down the plants that had white crystals on them… whack, whack, whack! After all, if the tomatoes and peppers aren’t going to ripen, why allow them to just take up space? But I didn’t. It’s one of those moments that you stop and say “What if?”

Well, the sun came out, the St. Croix Valley ALC students arrived, and frozen fingers didn’t stop these hard working, wonderful students…. and guess what? We had the most profuse bounty of tomatoes and peppers we have ever had in the garden! These students picked a combined 292lbs of produce for the food shelf! Had we cut those plants down, it would have still been in their prime, right before they could show their real stuff - that burst of brilliance that filled the food shelf with reds, orange, yellow and green......

WOW!

So, what was the Lesson Learned? Plants can be like people... Don't be too hard on people before they are ready or are briefly frozen from growth; maybe the best bloom of their season is yet to come. If we cut in haste and anger we may cut them down before we can see their true magnificence!

THANK YOU to Jackson, Max, Andrea, Coner, Henry, Oscar, Joe, Tom, David, Emily, Sam, Mikalah and Taylor!

First Frost!

2011-09-15T02:57:00.002-05:00

There is something breathtaking about the first frost of the year. Every twig, every branch, every blade of grass, every surface looks like they have been sprinkled with little crystals.

And while it’s breathtaking… it can literally take away a gardeners breath! We had a flurry of activity in the garden as we covered our tomato, eggplant and pepper plants with tarps and bags. Then we waited, held our breath, crossed our fingers, and hoped.

And while the drive to work was beautiful… the ice on top of the tarps was not! While we have a few plants that did not survive, we were fortunate to have the majority of our remaining crop survive!

This first frost was about three weeks early… and while it was breathtaking, we are more than happy to wait a few more weeks for the 2nd frost while the rest of our crop ripens...

Garden Shed, Inspectors and Humor!

2011-09-14T15:51:00.013-05:00

Click to Enlarge

Three of our Project Managers, Mike, Curt and Bob, began the final construction on our garden shed. This little building project has had to be squeezed into everyone’s day job of building bigger buildings. Thank you guys for all of your hard work - this winter it will make a great home to our garden stuff!

We had a surprise project inspection by two of our comic relief employees, Molly and Kelly, who came out to do a “building inspection”. Gotta love the pink sticky citations they issued all over the side of the building!

This… is a GREAT place to work!

The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. The moment it arises, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place." -- Mark Twain

Cornstalk Harvest

2011-09-08T14:42:00.020-05:00

L to R: Dan Pilquist, Max Christianson, Chris Pool, Joe Hinman
Henry Simmons, Coner Patterson, Jackson Maiers and James Barrett
Kneeling in front: Instructor Tom Wendt

Click to Enlarge

The St. Croix ALC Students were out today to not only pick, but to clear the corn stalks. The students bundled to stalks in groups of 5 and have them leaned in a corner of our building to dry out.

Once dry, the school, RCS and staff members can make use of these for fall decoration.

Click to Enlarge

Willis of MN Insurance Agency Sets New Daily Record!

2011-09-02T10:46:00.021-05:00

L to R: Debbie Rentz, Marcia Smith, Jeanne Woolley (standing), Nina Werstein,
Tara Michaels and Katie Connell (click to enlarge)

"Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass...
it's about learning how to dance in the rain!"

- Vivian Greene

We began this Friday with the skies opening up to some much needed rain… and greeting the rain drops and a muddy garden was a crew of six from Willis of Minnesota that knew how to dance in the rain. While the rain ended, the dance of collecting produce for the food shelf included lots of mosquito bites, questions, curiosity, prickly plants and a lot of smiles and laughter amongst the tomatoes, eggplant and beans.

Volunteerism is one of those things that is a little bit out of step with the trend to measure results immediately. Today, so much of what we do, especially in business, has to be measured for some sort of quantifiable return and the return has to be relatively quick. Yet volunteerism is the willingness of people to work on behalf of others without the expectation of pay or other immediate tangible gain.

Even though volunteerism may not easily be able to demonstrate the quick results so often demanded today, the spirit it represents has “immeasurable” importance to our communities.

Thank you to Tara Michaels, not only for joining us in the garden, but for organizing this fantastic group of volunteers from Willis; Nina Werstein, Marcia Smith, Debbie Rentz, Jeanne Woolley, and Katie Connell.

A new daily record for 2011 was set today with this group picking 262.6 lbs of produce. The quantity of fresh food that made the food shelf before a holiday weekend is beyond measurement, and I’m sure was enjoyed by many families over the long weekend. This record breaking day was not just about the numbers… Your impact on the community is “immeasurable”. Tara, Nina, Marcia, Debbie, Jeanne and Katie, RCS extends a heartfelt “Thank you” and an invitation to join us in the garden again - anytime.

"One hand cannot clap on its own
but it needs the other hand to make a clap."
"Many hands make light work."
- Maasai tribal saying

Where Did the Time Go?

2011-08-19T15:23:00.030-05:00

L to R: Lauren, Sophia, Charlie, Tammy,
Meghan, Hannah and Lisa.
(click to enlarge)

L to R: Tom Sanders, Joe Hinman,
Henry Simmons and Tom Wendt
(click to enlarge)

Today we not only had some ALC students in the garden, but this was the last summer field trip to the garden for the SPIN kids this year. Oh No!!!!

The students from St. Croix Valley ALC were here by 9am and did more mounding of our potatoes, weeded the lettuce, and removed the pea pod plants that have finished for the season.

Everyone began the harvest when the SPIN kids arrived. Corn, beans, eggplant, Swiss Chard, tomatoes, cucumbers, tomatilla’s, zucchini, lettuce, and the big attraction of the day? HOT PEPPERS! We had a little friendly competition between student Joe and one or our Project Mangers Bob. After picking a jalapeño with lots of striping, which indicates heat, Joe told Bob that if he ate it, he would try a bite.

Now Bob has a reputation at Retail Construction of never having enough hot sauce or never enough hot peppers on a dish! The pictures of the pepper challenge show Joe’s reaction after taking his bite of the dreaded pepper! A picture is worth a thousand words!

The Pepper Challenge! (click to enlarge)

Then the three brave SPIN souls of Sophia, Meghan and Hannah decided they wanted to try a slice! Let’s say that water was first on their list. We taught them the trick of eating tomatoes to cool down the heat and that worked very well. So well that Sophia used an open Sun Gold Cherry tomato to rub on her lips to cool them down! Needless to say, we had a good laugh with the seeds all over her face!

Sophia's Sun Gold Cherry tomato cure for burning lips!
(click to enlarge)

When the 115 lbs of produce was picked and weighed, the students were treated to two pizzas made with ingredients from the garden. Thank you Toni and Mary for making these great pizzas!

We will miss seeing the red and white school bus pulling into the parking lot; miss the laughter, the “Oh gross, it’s a slug” comments, and much, much more.

While the ALC will be back until the garden every Friday until the garden is put to bed this fall, we take our hats off to the SPIN kids and share a sincere “THANK YOU” for all of your help in the garden this summer. Because of your efforts, the food shelf has some wonderfully fresh produce to share amongst the St. Croix Valley residents. “YOU” made a big difference in the lives of so many people. What an amazing group of kids you are!

“Thank You”

Two Groups of Volunteers in the Garden!

2011-08-12T13:54:00.023-05:00

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait
a single moment before starting to
improve the world."

~Anne Frank

L to R: Matthew, Liam, Connor and Mark
(click to enlarge)

Sydney and Michael Larson
(click to enlarge)

We had two groups of voluneers in the garden today! We were joined by local youth; Connor Danford, Mark Donnelly, Liam O'Grady and Matthew Schleusner. These young men found out about our garden, and after a parent call, joined us this am. It was fun to see their competitive spirit in the garden on "who could pick the most" and listening to their fun sense of humor as they made their way from crop to crop!

L to R: Connor Danford, Mark Donelly, Liam O'Grady
and Matthew Schleusner (click to enlarge)

We were then joined a short time later by the SPIN students. The SPIN group was most excited about being able to pick carrots and more corn today. Many guesses were made as to how much in total produce would be donated today... 80 lbs? 90 lbs, 110 lbs, 95lbs, 72 lbs?...

Drum roll..... Together, these two groups set the new "Volunteer Daily Record" by picking 151 lbs of produce! This amount put us over 1,000 lbs donated so far this year. We are so lucky to have such great volunteers and fortunate for what we learn from each other every time we are in the garden. Thank you so much to each of you!

L to R: Eva, Tammy, Sophia, Megan and Hannah
(click to enlarge)

What's Up Doc?

2011-08-10T08:00:00.001-05:00

L to R: Ammy, Kayla, Haylea, MacKenzie, Emily, Anna, Shannon, Libby and Sadie
(click to enlarge image)

This morning we had a student summer program here from St. Peter Lutheran Church, led by Shannon Hecksel, Director of Christian Education at St. Peter. This program is for youth in grades 5-9 called "W.H.A.M. Week" (We Have A Mission) it is a week long program where they do service projects every day, fellowship and fun.

This group had so much energy and quickly took to splitting up the picking duties. The big surprise of the day? Our carrots were finally ready – and OH BOY were they ready!

This wonderful group picked 90 lbs of produce today – of which 33.2 lbs were carrots!

Thank you to Shannon Hecksel and his students; Ammy, Kayla, Haylea, MacKenzie, Emily, Anna, Shannon, and Libby, along with Sadie Fischer, adult volunteer and member of their Board of Education.

Thank you, and we are hoping that volunteers from St. Peter Lutheran Church can join us in the garden again soon!

L to R: Anna, Haylea, Ammy, Sadie, Emily, Shannon, Kayla, Libby, and MacKenzie
(click to enlarge image)

2011-08-09T08:24:00.001-05:00

Our corn crop had it’s first harvest today! Curt Kiesow from our office assisted in showing volunteer Linda Schliep how to identify if corn was ready for harvesting. Linda has been at our garden on several occasions weeding, and today was able to enjoy a harvest. Linda will be coming back to pick more corn as it is ready.

Thank you Curt and Linda!

Butterflies, Bugs and a Bounty

2011-08-05T13:14:00.129-05:00

Tom, Joy and Joe
(click to enlarge)

Joe hard at work!
(click to enlarge)

We were joined in the garden this morning first by Tom Wendt and student Joe Hinman from the St. Croix Valley ALC. Tom and Joe were joined by Joy from our office and they quickly went to work staking up the last of our cherry and tomatillo tomatoes. Shortly thereafter the white and red bus pulled up in the parking lot with the SPIN kids!

Cabbage Caterpillars - Oh my!
(Click to enlarge)

Not only did they get to harvest a bounty of food, but a bounty of bugs! We have the ever present Japanese Beetles, but today they discovered the Cabbage Caterpillars. The kids had fun watching and collecting these green destructive creatures. A red cabbage leaf was quickly turned into a caterpillar holding vessel.

Laura and Caterpillars!
(click to enlarge)

Monarch new out of its chrysalis !
(Click to enlarge)

Tom surprised the SPIN kids by bringing out a monarch chrysalis that was just emerging. Tom explained the Monarch metamorphosis process; how the caterpillar creates a chrysalis then 10 to 16 days later cracking open and out comes the monarch butterfly. Its wings are tiny, crumpled, and wet. The butterfly clings to its empty chrysalis shell as hemolymph, the blood-like substance of insects, is pumped through its body. As the hemolymph fills the monarch's body and wings, they enlarge. At that moment, the monarch is extremely vulnerable to predators because it is not yet able to fly until its wings dry and fully expand.

Click this link to see the entire process: http://www.linknot.com/Magic-Garden/Monarch-chrysalis.htm The SPIN students were invited to visit the ALC where they have over 60 of these chrysalis at various stages of development. The kids accepted the invitation and they stopped at Tom's classroom on their way to the food shelf. What a wonderful morning in the garden!

SPIN Kids - names to be added (click to enlarge image)

Fox 9 News Story on the Food Shelf Record

2011-08-04T13:03:00.002-05:00

Fox 9 News featured Valley Outreach in a story on Thursday night, August 4th. As a surprise to us, they called us Thursday afternoon and asked to come out to the Retail Construction Giving Garden as well. Below is the story that Leah Beno did. We hope that this result in many donations to the food shelves across the metro!

Stillwater Food Shelf Gives Out 4K Pounds in Single Day: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com

New Daily 2011 Record!

2011-08-01T11:25:00.004-05:00

We set a new 2011 daily record with 155 lbs of produce today. We had a couple cabbages that were finally ready. Some of the corn, eggplant and tomatoes will be ready this next week!

Challenge from RCS to You...

2011-07-29T15:22:00.016-05:00

On July 28th I received a call from Cara McLain, Food Shelf Program Director at Valley Outreach. They had set a new daily record and had distributed over 4,000 lbs of food to families in need. As Marna Canterbury, Executive Director of United Way Washington County East eloquently put it this afternoon "These are not the kind of records we want to be setting".

In speaking with Executive Director Kate Krisik today, Valley Outreach has been giving out between 45,000 to 50,000 lbs of food a month.

Our challenge to our volunteers, garden students, corporate sponsors, corporate volunteers... please do whatever you can to help Valley Outreach.

Do you have a home garden or community garden that has excess produce? Are your neighbors no longer needing your gifts of zucchini and tomatoes? Valley Outreach and other food shelves would love to take them off of your hands....

I've contacted local media as well, and hopefully, we can bring to light the desperate need for donations during the summer. If the 4,000 lb day is any indication, the need is substantial.

Valley Outreach

http://valleyoutreachmn.org/

Phone: 651-430-2739

E-Mail: info@valleyoutreachmn.org

1911 Curve Crest Blvd. West
Stillwater, Minnesota 55082

In an email from Marna this afternoon, I share the following:

"...... It is heartbreaking that person or families resources are so scarce that they struggle to have enough food, and go hungry. It is a most basic human need and the demands on our local Valley Outreach food shelf are growing tremendously.

We have seen that hunger is often a barometer of the rising needs under the surface for our neighbors who are struggling. The people and families experiencing hunger and turns to a food shelf often come with multiple other needs. Underlying issues including housing, chronic illness, or disability, or the costs of health care can drain a person’s resources…leaving them financially unstable, and also hungry.

·United Way supports the needs for food, housing, health care and stability for our neighbors through funding more than 50 essential programs including the important work being done by Valley Outreach. United Way also support:

· Local volunteer transportation programs to make sure that our elders can access services, or food, even if they cannot drive.

· Affordable, healthy foods can help stretch the food budgets for all through the Fare for All discounted shopping program every month in Stillwater where anyone can purchase produce and meat products at greatly reduced prices.

The time to reach out to our neighbors is now. Food is needed now. Volunteers are needed for many programs including volunteer drivers so people access services. Financial support is needed to meet all these growing and interconnected needs, with a focus on long term ways to help people have stable lives again."

Marna Canterbury, MS, RD - Executive Director

United Way of Washington County-East

Building Better Lives in Stillwater
and the heart of Washington County

651-439-3838 http://www.buildbetterlives.org/

Thank you...

SPIN Kids Set a New 2011 Daily Picking Record --- 66.2 lbs!

2011-07-29T13:54:00.026-05:00

L to R: Laura, Tess, Syndey, Eva and Sophia (Click image to enlarge)

Click image to see enlarge collage...

Today the Stillwater SPIN kids joined us in the garden. We had a smaller class today since they did not have a bus to take to the garden. I shared with the kids the phone call I received from the food shelf yesterday looking for more food. Valley Outreach Food Shelf had distributed over 4,000 lbs of food on Thursday to families in need, and they were in need of more. They had received a donation of $900 yesterday afternoon for food, but need more donations to meet the ever growing need. We were hoping we would have around 60 lbs of fresh produce to donate to them today.

This group, Laura, Tess, Eva, Sydney and Sophia, along with their teachers, Kristen and Tammy work picking produce. The raspberry bushes were so full of Japanese Beetles that we had to skip picking until we can shoo them away this afternoon. Who needs beetle bites? – Not us! The seven raspberries they did harvest made a quick trip to the water for a rinse and then into kid tummies!

The produce picked today included cucumbers, beans, green peppers, banana peppers, lettuce, pea pods, summer squash, and zucchini. The kids had fun with some of the English cucumbers that closely resembled giant smiles… you can see in the photos they were quick to use it for a photo op!

When the picking was done, we headed over to the compost bin. A few weeks ago the ALC High School led a lesson plan on composting. It was fun for the students to be able to see the status of the decomposing waste and how it is turning back into soil. Tess made a comparison between the decomposing compost and animals, humans and other things returning to the soil. What a wonderfully curious and thoughtful group!

Everyone took turns weighing the produce and guessing how much we had picked in total. The guesses ranged between 45 to 60 lbs…. Drum roll please……

This group set the new 2011 daily record by picking 66.2 lbs of produce! Valley Outreach Food Shelf will be very happy when this group stops by to donate their hard work.

Thank you again SPIN kids Laura, Tess, Eva, Sydney, Sophia and their leaders, Kristen and Tammy. We look forward to seeing a full red and white bus pull up to the garden this next Friday with even more kids!

Some interesting numbers to share with everyone: Last year, by this time, we had harvested 53.9 lbs of produce. This year we are already at 386.3 lbs! I think we are on track to make our goal of 3,000 lbs this year!!

Andersen Windows Volunteers in the Giving Garden!

2011-07-25T16:13:00.008-05:00

Front L to R: Shelley Wink, Beelian Ong, LeAnn Wakefield
Back L to R: Katie Tjader, Paul Sinz, Dave Krueger
Click to enlarge image

In the words of William Arthur Ward, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” Today we are so grateful to the six volunteers that graced our garden from Andersen Windows. It was a beautiful sunny day, but this group created their own wind storm with their hard work!

They first harvested and weighed the crops. By the way, this group set a new 2011 corporate volunteer record by picking 60lbs of produce in one day! The green and yellow beans were abundant – 14.4 lbs or 24% of the total donation. That’s a lot bean picking! Can you say “full of beans”?

The second activity was building new tomato cages. Our tomato plants have become their own jungle and were growing out of control. The crew from Andersen put wooden stake structures around each tomato plant and secured them with twine. I stepped outside a few times to take photos, talk and see their progress. I enjoyed stepping back and watching not their hard working, but their fluid team work, camaraderie and laughter. What a joy it was to have Shelley, Katie, LeAnn, Beelian, Dave and Paul in the garden today.

(click to enlarge image of tomato cages)

So, the challenge is on for another group of corporate volunteers to pick more that 60 pounds of produce in a day! Not only did they set a new 2011 record, Valley Outreach Food Shelf and their clients reaped the wonderful benefit of food for the next meal.

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us;

what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

~Albert Pike

Thank you again Andersen Windows for sending this wonderful group to the garden!

New Crops to Harvest & Challenges in the Garden

2011-07-22T15:38:00.029-05:00

New crops: Pea Pods, Green Beans, Yellow Beans and Swiss Chard

STUDENT PHOTOS TO BE POSTED SOON!

The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.

B.B. King

The St. Croix Valley Area Learning Center students came out to the garden to harvest this morning. While there were formal lessons in the garden today, there is always something to learn and grow from. We talked about the challenges the garden is facing; Japanese Beetles, too much water, too much heat, and powdery mildew. While we were talking about solutions, student Brian Dickie took the initiative to look up on the Internet via his cell phone our 'curling leaf' problem with some tomato and neighboring plants. We were given options of too much water or too hot... of which we all kind of laughed that we have had plenty of both!

We had new crops ready today! The students were able to learn when these crops are ready to pick; yellow beans, green beans, pea pods and Swiss chard! Other crops picked today were cucumbers, green peppers, banana peppers, lettuce, summer squash, zucchini, and a few raspberries. Joni talked with the students about being able to make 'chips' out of Kale and Swiss Chard by doing the following:

Kale or Swiss Chard Chips

Wash and pat dry

Break into larger bite size chip pieces

Shake in a bag with olive oil

Sprinkle with sea salt

Bake in a 200 degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes until crisp...

Mmmm, Mmmm!

Giving Garden Becomes an Outdoor Classroom!

2011-07-18T15:27:00.005-05:00

Morning Class

Afternoon Class

Tom Wendt brought two groups of students out today, a morning and afternoon group. The students at the St. Croix Valley Area Learning Center were able to utilzed the Giving Garden as an outdoor classroom. Full story of the classroom lessons will be posted soon!

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

Henry B Adams

Stormy Weather, New Arrivals and Solar!

2011-07-15T09:38:00.007-05:00

Click to enlarge photo

The ALC Students arrived early and worked fast to beat the stormy weather that has now opened up on the garden! They picked cucumbers, lettuce, summer squash and zucchini. New cops that they just started harvesting today are the raspberries and pea pods! Tom Wendt and the students will be returning on Monday for a food lesson plan in the garden.

On the far right of the garden picture you will notice our new solar system being installed next to the garden. This system will supply our building with power and on the weekends we will be able to sell energy back to Xcel Energy. We will be doing some educational lessons in the garden on solar power once the system is complete and sharing that information on our blog!

Thank You Card from the Summer Stretch Students!

2011-07-14T11:12:00.004-05:00

Today we received a wonderful Thank You card from the Summer Stretch students. Thank you in return to all of you for your hard work in the garden! The garden doors are open at any time you want to come back or even bring your families out to share the story of this Giving Garden!

Generous Donation from the Lake Elmo Jaycees!

2011-07-13T10:55:00.005-05:00

http://lakeelmojaycees.org/

This week the RCS Giving Garden received an incredibly generous gift from the Lake Elmo Jaycees! Dawn from our office has had an affiliation with this wonderful organization and had contacted them the garden project. This past Thursday night the group voted to make a $300.00 donation to our garden. Words cannot express our gratitude for your generosity and the impact it will make on what this garden can give back not only to the food shelf, but in the lessons it has to teach within our community. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

"We make a living by what we get,

but we make a life by what we give.”

Winston Churchill

ALC "AND" SPIN Students in the Garden!

2011-07-08T10:35:00.002-05:00

High School and SPIN Kids together again! (Click photo to enlarge)

The ALC and SPIN Students were in the garden this am with the ALC students taking on the role as mentors to the SPIN students! There was a lesson plan on composting that the ALC taught the SPIN students. They relocated our compost bin along with picking produce and garden maintenance projects.

The final lesson, building a soda bottle bioreactor ((Click here to view the project!)), was one that the students could take back to the classroom or home.

Thank you to both of these wonderful group for joining us in the garden! We look forward to you sharing pictures of your homemade bioreactors!!!

Summer Stretch Students Return to the Giving Garden!

2011-07-06T09:51:00.005-05:00

A second group of students from the St. Croix Summer Stretch Program returned to the garden. The students learned to harvest strawberries, zucchini and cucumbers. Unfortunately, the strawberry crop had come to a screeching halt, so the students only had a small taste. When the crop was picked and weighed, they moved on to the beans and pea pods. These six rows needed extra stringer lines added in order for the produce to have more climbing space. Once again, this Summer Stretch group was a wonderful group to work with...! Lots of smiles from these hard workers. Thank you Summer Stretch!

Summer Stretch Visits the Garden!

2011-06-29T09:42:00.003-05:00

The students from the St. Croix Summer Stretch Program made their first visit to the Giving Garden! Their two previous attempts were rained out, so today the sun was shining and ready for their helping hands. This group painted our sign posts and weeded the garden. The smiles you see on their faces were the same smiles we saw the entire time they were working. What a great group! Thank you gals!

Strawberries and Weeds and SPIN Kids - OH MY!

2011-06-24T09:24:00.001-05:00

A group of kids from the Stillwater SPIN program were in the garden today to pick strawberries and weed. While the weeding is not always the favorite job in the garden, these kids were troopers and also had a change to taste some great berries from the garden as a treat for their hard work! Thank you SPIN!

Strawberries, Strawberries Everywhere!

2011-06-20T08:48:00.001-05:00

This is the 2nd season for our strawberry plants that were donated by the Kiesow family, and the 2nd year must be the charm! To date, we have picked and donated 36.4 lbs of strawberries for the food shelf. By next year, these 100 plants should be keeping us pretty busy in the month of June!

Giving Garden Project Board Completed!

2011-06-17T16:23:00.004-05:00

Our Project Board was completed today! Mike Lubarski, a Project Manager at RCS, worked through the afternoon humidity to created this great addition to the garden. Not only is he an amazing carpenter with bits and pieces of recycled lumber; he has the ability to look at a tiny picture that was emailed to him and come up with this prototype. ("Mike, could you build this above our irrigation stand?" - guilty party? - Joni...) Carpentry is an art, and Mike's translation of a tiny emailed photo confirms that.

What ordinary people once made, they buy; and what they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair, whose expert fix often involves installing a pre-made replacement part. In this garden we make every effort to reuse, re-purpose, recyle and do by hand. From the wooden window blinds that became row markers, our recycled garden shed, to this project board. We will take every opportunity we can, to teach by example, what can be done with materials saved from the landfill.

We will be utilizing this project board to write our To Do List for garden chores. Not only will this help our staff of volunteers, but those volunteers from the community who stop by and want to help out.

SPECIAL THANKS to Mike Lubarski, along with a thank you to Mary and Jim! (more photos below)

Mike Lubarski - Project Manager

Jim Ashbach and Mike Lubarski

Mary Gilbertson and Mike Lubarski

Jim Ashbach and Mike Lubarski

Side view of the project board

Amazing Spinach and Lettuce Crop!

2011-06-16T14:23:00.001-05:00

We definitely have been battling the weeds this year... but after they were removed we saw that we have the most amazing crop of lettuce and spinach this year! Wow! It won't be long before we are heading to the food shelf with these wonderful treats!

A little garden humor;Will this crop bring joy? Yes!
Then Lettuce all smile.

Stawberries in June - Our 1st 2011 Donation!

2011-06-13T16:08:00.010-05:00

We had our first donation for 2011 today! 1.3 lbs of fresh strawberries! It reminds us of the lesson we taught in 2009 to SPIN students in the garden called: "The cost of eating strawberries in October".

Did You Know?

Andean farmers once grew some 4,000 potato varieties, each with its own name, flavor, and use, ranging in size from tiny to gigantic and covering the color spectrum from indigo-purple to red, orange, yellow and white. It use to be that people ate what they grew locally and what was in season. With the increased appetite for produce that was out of season (eating strawberries in October as an example), and the increased demand to ship produce all over the world, farmers had to start breeding varieties that held up in boxcars, trucks, or ship’s cargo. Now, even in the regions of Peru least affected by the modern market, only a few dozen potato varieties are widely grown.
We put as much fossil fuels in our refrigerators as we do our cars?
We consume 400 gallons of oil per year, per person, about 17% of our nation’s energy for agriculture? That includes tractors, tillers, fertilizer, insecticides, drying, packaging, shipping, etc…
But getting the crop from seed to harvest only takes 1/5 of the total fossil fuel used for food.
Each food item in a typical US meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles!
If every US Citizen ate just one meal a week, any meal, composed of locally and organically grown meat or produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels every week. (Animal, Vegetable Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver)

So what is the cost of eating

Strawberries in October?

RCS Garden Shed Begins to Take Shape!

2011-05-26T13:40:00.055-05:00

Mike Lubarski and Bob Lubarski

St. Croix Valley ALC along with employees of RCS

While not quite complete, the RCS Giving Garden shed took shape today! The St. Croix Valley ALC joined us in the garden for the shed building project. We had used doors, windows and lumber donated to the construction of this garden addition.

Students were divided into three groups. Mary Gilbertson worked with a student crew on installing wall studs. Ben Kreye instructed students on rafters and installing the old doors onto the exterior. Mike Lubarski's student crew worked on laying out and securing the floor joists.

The shed is ready for one last door, siding, the roof and subfloor to be completed sometime this next week. The photo video below shows some of the student having a hands on experience in shed building 101.

Not only will this shed be home to our well used garden gloves and tools, but will also be a place to start seedlings in the coming years!

We have water!

2011-05-26T10:00:00.019-05:00

We have water! Steve Bachman worked on our new irrigation layout. The system includes soaker lines for our seeded areas as well as direct plant irrigation lines. The system is divided into 3 zones. The zones are controlled by timers that will water the garden early every morning at half hour increments.

Gardening requires lots of water...

most of it in the form of perspiration.

--by Lou Erickson

While this quote holds true, we are "so" grateful for our irrigation system! Thank you Steve!

Planting Day!

2011-05-24T18:46:00.042-05:00

Click to Enlarge Photos

UPS Team!

On Tuesday, May 24th, we had our garden planting day. We were joined by the Stillwater ALC as well as a team from UPS. The plants this year were donated by Bergmann's Greenhouse and Gardens. Thank you Peggy and your team! These plants are sure to bring many pounds of vegetables for the food shelf! Thank you to Paul Ritchman from the Washinton County UofM Master Gardeners Extension program who joined us and shared his expertise! Thank you too to our own staff at RCS who were able to join us in the garden!

ALC Group #1

This year we are trying a "wide row planting method". Wide-row gardening means grouping several rows together, rather than planting in single rows. The seeds are staggered in an area about 4 to 5" wide. In addition to saving space, it saves time, increases yield, plants, such as beans, are stand up better to windy conditions and it makes harvesting easier. We are hoping that his method also doubles or triples the volume of our produce from seed starters!

ALC Group #2

This is our 3rd year and I believe we have learned some shortcuts in planting! Work began at 9 a.m. and we were completed just before 11 a.m.! We were all amazed how fast the process went!

While we still have a few more additions, as well as the peanuts to plant once the plants arrive, our 2011 garden is in and ready for the summer!

Dan Braun our Garden Layout Master!

Joy, Hannah & Becky

Toni May and a Stillwater Student

Framing the Garden Shed

2011-05-20T18:40:00.004-05:00

L to R: Mike Lubarski, Ben Kreyre and Bob Lubarski (Click to enlarge photo)

The week of May 20th, staff members of RCS began framing of the garden shed. On May 26th the students from the Stillwater ALC will be here to help finish the project. The shed will be constructed of reused, recycled, reclaimed doors and windows. We will be posting pictures of the completed shed after the 26th, and again after it is painted on another project date. The video below follows the afternoon work along with just fun antics!

2011 Garden Planning is Peanuts!

2011-03-29T12:19:00.029-05:00

Click image, then click a 2nd time to enlarge and read about peanut plants!

Today marked the first meeting with the high school students from St. Croix ALC. We discussed how certain vegetables grow well by feeding off of other similar plants from the same family, how the crops should be rotated so the bugs from last year don’t hatch and start right back in again on the plants, and what new seeds we want to try planting this year.

We are going to incorporate new herbs in the center strip of our parking lot, such as basil, parsley, rosemary, thyme, cilantro, etc. Also, we are thinking about adding colored carrots to the mix, such as purple and red ones for a fun variety. Purple potatoes were another addition discussed. The biggest and by far the most interesting will be the peanuts we will try planting. One student mentioned how he likes peanuts, cashews, etc., and another student said we could add peanuts to a garden veggie stir fry at the end of the season. Paul Richtman, the Master Gardener, stated that peanuts should be an easy crop to try out.
Other than that, the garden will be laid-out similar to last year’s garden; the crops will just be rotated. Let’s hope it turns out to be as successful as last year! I think we have a great group of students helping out this year.

- Ben Kreye

Click this line to read more about growing peanuts

Garden Planning in the Works!

2011-02-15T15:24:00.004-06:00

Tom Nelson stopped by from the Washington County Master Gardeners program today to confirm that the RCS Giving Garden will be back again this summer. The answer is a resounding "YES"!

In the next three weeks we are coordination with the St. Croix ALC high school students to plan the 2011 garden. We will have to look at crop rotation, compatible plants, what worked and what didn't work last year.

We look forward to this time of planning, and once again, the fruition of our community coming together, one seed at a time!

Who knows.... maybe this year, we will reach 3,000 lbs of food grown for the food shelf!

"We make a living by what we get,
we make a life by what we give."
- Winston Chuchill

It's going to be a great growing season! - Joni

More Helping Hands!

2011-01-25T08:13:00.001-06:00

We received the green light on Monday that those families who receive the produce from the Giving Garden will be signing up to volunteer and work in the garden! RCS is also helping Valley Outreach build a kitchen addition to the food shelf where they will be teaching cooking and nutrition classes to those who utilize the food shelf. We will have lots of hands helping in the garden this year!

The ALC high school students will soon be involved in the planning of the 2011 Giving Garden! They will be taking into consideration crop rotation, those crops that produced well, those that didn't and need to be replaced.

In the meantime... our garden sleeps!

The Garden Sleeps

2010-10-20T14:42:00.022-05:00

Tangled roots and blooms
of this garden sleep,

But Ahhh, its soul?
Continues to grow ever deep.
- Joni Fletty

Morning Group L to R: Nick Heino, Blia Vang, Tom Wendt, Dylan Peltier, Cole Tarrars, DJ Kammerer, Dan Pilquist

Afternoon Group - Back L to R: Nate Hanson, Steve Yang, Luke Caffey,
Shanan Martin, Connor Goulet, Tom Ament, Race McDonald, Scott Seifert
Front L to R: Tom Wendt, Blia Vang, CJ Walker, Jake Sonnen
(Click on photos to enlarge)

We had an amazingly successful year in the garden. Our goal was to reach 2,000 lbs of fresh food donated to the food shelves, and we surpassed that goal by 403.3 lbs, for a grand total of 2,403.3.

Thank you to the young adults from the Stillwater ALC who joined us to put the garden to bed for the winter. They took down the fencing, removed the irrigation system, took down the structures, pulled large plants, removed the row markers and pulled up the landscape fabric. Both the morning and afternoon groups accomplished a lot in the time they were here!

A big "Thank you" to Neil and Deb Krueger from Krueger's Christmas Tree Farm, http://kruegerschristmastrees.com/, who were out here to multch up the garden until they till it again in the spring!

It will be quiet in the garden as the temperatures drop and the snow covers the ground with a blanket of "rest". But this winter, while the activity will not be on land, it will be in the class room as we once again involve the ACL with putting together the garden plan for next season.

Final Harvest & Record Setting Day!

2010-10-07T11:20:00.014-05:00

The ALC Students reached a new daily record
by picking 223.7 lbs of produce today!
(Click on photos to enlarge)

1st ALC Group: Left to Right - Bronson Koller, Nate Eldridge, Laura Buys, Connor Mulcahy (front), Dexter Peltier (back), Brian Dickie, Todd Derousier

2nd ALC Group: Left to Right - Steve Yang, Travis Brown, Tom Ament, Race McDonald, Connor Goulet, Nate Hanson, Blake Tomasko

Thank you ALC Students! The frost hit our garden hard this past weekend and this was the final picking day. We reached a 2010 grand total of 2,403.3 lbs of produce donated this season! That is up +596.5 lbs from 2009.

We will be putting the garden to bed on Thursday, October 21st. Anyone who would like to join us in the garden to help is welcome! We will be starting around 9 am. The ALC students are confirmed for that date as well.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. ~Anne Frank

Stillwater ALC Students in the Garden Today!

2010-09-30T12:00:00.019-05:00

Click on Photo to Enlarge
Back Row - L to R: Laura Buys, Paulo Segura, Tyler Maysack, Nate Eldridge, Cole Tarras, Riley Rollings, Brian Dickie.

Front Row - L to R: Jake Tobin, Tom Wendt, Connor Mulcahy.

The young adults from the Stillwater ALC were in the garden today! Our brussel sprouts were finally maturing and the students harvested 13.6 lbs and were able to see how they look when ready to harvest. The daily total was 92.2 pounds; not only brussel sprouts but cabbage, cant elope, eggplant, peppers, lettuce, onion, tomatoes and fall raspberries!

Our garden is rich every time these students join us. Not only do we enjoy the laughter, but enjoy every time we are able to teach something new.

One of the things the students learned was about the brown rough lines on jalapeno and other hot peppers. These rough brown lines are called “corking”. This is a number of very fine horizontal lines on the peppers that indicate readiness to pick. The more lines, the hotter the pepper!

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things
which he can afford to let alone."
from the chapter "Where I Lived and What I Lived For" in Walden

RCS Giving Garden Reaches it's 2010 Goal!

2010-09-27T16:04:00.032-05:00

Joanne Honsvall-Berg, United Way of Washington County-East

Today we passed our 2010 RCS Giving Garden goal of 2,000 lbs! We harvested 113.6 pounds of produce, bringing our annual total to 2,048.5 and counting.

Joanne Honsvall-Berg from United Way of Washington County-East delivered the fruit and vegetables to Courage St. Croix this afternoon.

While reaching our goal is an exciting milestone, the more important measurement is this; As Joanne from United Way shared with us; when she delivered produce to one of the sites, a woman offered to help her carry in the onions and tomatoes. She held them up to her nose, inhaled deeply and said:

“I’m going to eat really good tonight”.

That is what this is all about,
And the most important measurement of all...

Recipients from the Giving Garden this year have been; Valley Outreach (our primary drop site) and United Way’s additional recipients; East Suburban Resources, Cimarron after school program in Lake Elmo, and Courage St. Croix.

Thank you first and foremost to our Retail Construction staff of employees who have volunteered their time, talents and ideas to the garden project. Thank you to our educational partners; Stillwater ALC, Stillwater School Districts SPIN program , and Lake Elmo Elementary Adventure Club. Thank you also to our corporate volunteers; UPS and Andersen Corporation. A big thank you goes to those that donated seeds, compost, plants, etc. There are so many to list, but a big thank you to some of our major donors; Bergmann's Greenhouse & Garden, Krueger's Christmas Tree Farm, Future Farm Food and Fuel and The Master Gardener's program. Your donations of time, money and items for the garden have been instrumental in helping us provide for so many with so little.

Record Breaking Day in the Garden!

2010-09-14T20:40:00.018-05:00

Back, L to R: Denise Lemon, Dawn Rossi, Keith Miller & Don Thron
Front, kneeling: Joy Grognet

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

We had a small group from Andersen Corp. volunteer today, and what an amazing change they made in the Giving Garden. Not only did this group of four pick the 2nd largest poundage for a single day, they took the produce to Valley Outreach, stocked the shelves, performed other work there, and then returned to the garden for ‘more’.

Joy from our office worked along side to familiarize them with our garden and its rhythms. I heard there was much laughter amongst the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.

This mornings harvest yielded 161.4 pounds of produce; bringing us to an YTD total of 1,825.3 pounds! Denise, Don, Keith and Dawn were responsible for breaking last years’ record by 18.5 pounds! But…, they didn't stop there. When they found out that there were two other larger harvest days (173.4 and 214.1), they harvested the potatoes, some parsley, and with the addition of one monstrous zucchini, brought the daily total to 176.6 lbs. Our new annual total sits at 1,840.5 pounds; 33.7 lbs more than 2009. This was one motivated group!

As for our potato crop, well, three barrels this year only produced a total of 7.9 pounds of potatoes. The photo shows the tiniest of these gems… quarter size to be exact!

After the afternoon harvest, the group successfully freed our poor strawberry plants from the grips of every type of weed imaginable. With keeping with a 100% organic garden, our first priority has been keeping the weeds at bay in vegetable rows. The poor strawberries? Well, they had disappeared until this afternoon.

We are very, very fortunate to have met these new friends from the Valley. We extend a sincere thanks to the four of you. Not only for all of your hard work, but for bringing your spirit of giving to this giving garden.

Big Harvest Today!

2010-09-08T15:19:00.011-05:00

Today we harvested 214.1 lbs of produce to donate to Valley Outreach! We had tomatoes, zucchini, cabbage, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, squash, broccoli, raspberries, beans, carrots, onion, hot peppers, and white eggplant!

The white eggplant was the most prevalent crop today. Native to India with small, white, smooth-skinned is one of many domesticated eggplants. Has an Italian-style shape and creamy texture.

Our Brussels sprouts are really starting to show, and we hope to have some by next week!

Jake in the Garden!

2010-09-03T11:12:00.027-05:00

Jake Tobin from the Stillwater ALC High School joined us in the garden this morning. He was here bright and early at 8am, ready to harvest that which was hiding from the cold and the wind. He has been in the garden from the first day we planted seeds in this soil and has had the opportunity to watch the garden flourish from a brown landscape to a green canvas, dotted with little bits of color and flavor everywhere.

Jake is full of life in the garden, has an infectious smile and genuine enthusiasm for this project. He is a joy to have an open dialogue with about heirloom plants, seeds and ‘where our food comes from’. I have a poem that someone shared with me that aligned perfectly with the passionate spirit that Jake brings to the garden.

"I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance;

to live

so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit."

-Dawna Markova

We picked 128.2 pounds of white eggplant, onions, lettuce, green peppers, hot peppers, squash, tomatoes and cucumber this morning. Jake asked if he could stop in anytime and help out in the garden, even after he graduates. The answer? ‘Yes’, a hundred times ‘yes’.

Thank you Jake for sharing your zest for life in this garden. These recipes are for you;

Eggplant Crostini

Zucchini Stir Fry

Spaghetti Squash has Arrived!

2010-08-27T10:08:00.004-05:00

Our spaghetti squash crop has been coming in! Spaghetti squash isn't a small-town festival where women stomp pasta in giant wooden vats. It's a vegetable whose name makes perfect sense when you cook it--underneath the rind, the flesh separates into long pasta-like strands.

Along with butternut squash, turban squash, and pumpkins, spaghetti squash is part of the winter squash family, sometimes known as "keeper" squash because they will last for several months in cool storage. Their hard rind that protects them from moisture, an attribute that people have been taking advantage of for thousands of years--parts of winter squash have been found in pre-Columbian archeological sites in South America.
North American natives grew them too.

In fact, our name for squash comes from the Naraganset word "askutasquash" which the colonists corrupted to "isquotersquash," (think it in a Dutch accent) later shortened to just plain squash.

As for storage, keep them at room temperature for up to a month. For longer-term storage, ideally you need a place where the temperature hovers around 50 degrees.

We cooked one for our office staff to try. Wash and dry a squash and keep it whole. Rub the outside shell with olive oil, pierce one or two holes into it with a knife. Place on a baking dish and bake for 40 to 50 minutes at 350 degrees. When done your fork or knife will easily pierce it. Cut it open, and enjoy as is, or toss with a little olive oil or butter and a few herbs such as basil, chives, chervil, parsley or sage. Enjoy!

And it Just Keeps on Growing!!

2010-08-20T13:33:00.011-05:00

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
~Harold Whitman~

This quote embodies the spirit we see in Tom Wendt from the Stillwater ALC; not only in his interactions with his students, but in the pure joy he brings to the garden. Tom joined us in the garden this morning to pick the produce that just keeps on growing! The SPIN program has wound down for the summer, and the ALC Students are not back in session until after Labor Day. However, Tom has been wonderful in joining us every Friday morning in the garden to pick, not to mention bringing the produce over to Valley Outreach food shelf for donation.

Today we had tomatoes, lettuce, onions, beans, zucchini, squash, corn, LOTS of hot peppers, bell peppers and eggplant. Below the bottom pictures are links to the three recipes that went to the food shelf with the produce. Again, these were supplied by Molly Brendmoen in our office.

Thank you Tom, and thank you to all of those in our office that are working in the garden every week!

Stuffed Green Peppers

Baked Jalapeno Poppers

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

The Corn is Ready!

2010-08-17T11:38:00.015-05:00

The majority of our corn crop was ready to pick today. Between the corn, beans, tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, we donated just a hair under 87 pounds of produce today.

We also had some of our tomatilla tomatoes ready. The tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica) is a plant of the tomato family, related to the cape gooseberry, bearing small, spherical and green or green-purple fruit of the same name. Tomatillos, referred to as green tomato (Spanish: tomate verde) in Mexico, are a staple in Mexican cuisine. Tomatillos are grown throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The tomatillo fruit is surrounded by a paper-like husk formed from the calyx. As the fruit matures, it fills the husk and can split it open by harvest. The husk turns brown, and the fruit can be any of a number of colors when ripe, including yellow, red, green, or even purple. Tomatillos are the key ingredient in fresh and cooked Latin American green sauces. The freshness and greenness of the husk are quality criteria. Fruit should be firm and bright green, as the green colour and tart flavour are the main culinary contributions of the fruit.
Tomatillo plants are highly self-incompatible (two or more plants are needed for proper pollination; thus isolated tomatillo plants rarely set fruit).

Ripe tomatillos will keep in the refrigerator for about two weeks. They will keep even longer if the husks are removed and the fruits are placed in sealed plastic bags stored in the refrigerator. They may also be frozen whole or sliced. Molly Brendmoen on our staff offered the following recipes to go along with the these wonderful treats! Click on the link below to open each recipe!

Avocado and Tomatillo Salsa
Tomatillo Salsa Verde Recipe

173.4 lbs of Produce Picked in One Day!

2010-08-13T12:26:00.007-05:00

Our follow up painting day was cancelled today due to the rain and the wet lumber. However, Andrew Peltier, a student from Stillwater's ALC, and his teacher, Tom Wendt joined us in the garden to harvest.

There was a LOT today! Yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, white eggplant, green peppers, hot peppers, green beans, carrots, lettuce, onions, a couple cabbage, tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. Andrew was a trouper and not only picked the produce, but did all the weighing and logging. Andrew works in the kitchen of a local restaurant, and was able to take home a white eggplant to put his culinary skills to the test. Andrew, you will have to let us know the recipe you came up with!

Thank you Tom and thank you Andrew Peltier!

Painting Day in the Garden!

2010-08-06T11:01:00.007-05:00

(PHOTO RELEASE PENDING)

The Stillwater SPIN Kids joined us in the garden today. The ALC Students were on break, but their instructor, Tom Wendt joined us.

The kids first picked and weighed produce to donate to the food shelf. Just this week we have had 97.5 lbs of produce to donate! The carrots and peppers are really coming in, and we had our first batch of cherry tomatoes to pick.

Our garden shed has obtained final approval from the City of Lake Elmo, and with the donated wood from Louise Engwer, we had framing materials to prime. Our garden shed needs to stay within the criteria of "earthen tones", so we collected used cans of paint from our employees, and Tom Wendt from Stillwater's ALC mixed up a nice earthen tone from the rainbow of colors! The Stillwater SPIN program donated a lot paint brushes. Thank you SPIN Program!

After the kids put on their paint shirts, they prime painted the 4x4's that will become the framework for the garden shed. Joy Grognet from our office, Retail Construction Services, helped coordinate the paint day.

Lumber Donation from the Newmans!

2010-08-06T09:18:00.002-05:00

On Friday morning, August 6th, before the kids arrived, Chuck Newman and his wife, (we need her lovely name!), generously dropped off a donation of lumber for the garden shed. We have been blessed with the materials needed to complete the framing on the shed, and the kids were able to begin painting these prior to construction.

Chuck had called RCS the day before after also receiving the email from United Way of Washington County East looking for donations. Before we knew it, he was here the next morning with his donation.

"Thank you" so much to the Newman's for your donation!

Garden Donation from Lou Engwer!

2010-08-05T12:13:00.005-05:00

Marna Canterbury from The United Way of Washington County East had put out an email that the RCS garden was looking for donated, used lumber for our garden shed. We received the most wonderful call from local resident and United Way volunteer, Louise Engwer. She generously donated $100 to the RCS Giving Garden.

While she was camera shy, Retail Construction Services, Inc. extends the most sincere "thank you" to Lou for her generous donation. This donation has helped up buy additional supplies needed to complete our garden shed project with the kids!

Thank you Lou!

UPS Volunteers Enjoy the Fruition of Planting Day!

2010-08-03T13:48:00.007-05:00

Left to Right: Libby Wenzel, Andy Wenzel, Lynne Barten, Christina Paquette, Jason Briggs, Mike Von Wald

"If you've never experienced the joy of accomplishing more than you can imagine, plant a garden." Robert Brault. Team members from UPS returned to the garden today and had the wonderful surprise of seeing how much the garden had grown since they joined us for planting day on May 24th!

Since the launch of their Volunteer Impact Initiative in 1999, volunteerism has become a global phenomenon at UPS as employees around the world have embraced this important piece of the organization’s culture. Every year UPSers from the most senior levels of management to the part-time ranks lend their skills in a variety of ways. From serving as directors for high performing non-profits to lending their skills as loaned executives to local United Ways, UPSers embrace opportunities to participate in knowledge sharing, skills-based volunteerism with its employees and families volunteering more than 1.2 million hours of their time each year.

Additionally, The UPS Foundation, founded has pursued initiatives by identifying specific projects where its support can help produce a measurable social impact. In 2009, The UPS Foundation donated more than $43 million US to charitable organizations worldwide. Visit: http://responsibility.ups.com/ for more information about UPS's community involvement.

We thank the team from UPS for clearing the tomato aisle ways, picking produce and clearing more many more weeds that seem to "love" our garden as much as the produce! We look forward to the UPS team joining us throughout the gardening season. Thank you guys!

2010-07-30T13:39:00.001-05:00

The ALC and SPIN students were in the garden again this morning! The ALC students mentored the SPIN students on our favorite… garden pests! Having an organic garden has its struggles, and pests are one of them. They students learned about Potato Bugs, the abundant Japanese Beetles this year, and a few vegetable and potato fun facts.

The students collected Japanese Beetles, crickets and other small bugs off of the plants. They then picked, weighed and donated produce from the garden to Valley Outreach food shelf.

We had some Gecko’s visit the company for the day, so all of the students were able to see and enjoy the Gecko’s!

Harvesting Your Own Seeds Day!

2010-07-26T11:26:00.018-05:00

The students from the Stillwater ALC High School were in the Retail Construction Giving Garden this morning for “seed” day. We talked about genetically engineered seeds and its impact on our world. (see photo video below for pictures from this morning!)

We began with the potato, and I don’t mean “French fries”! Potatoes were first cultivated by the Inca Indians in Peru in about 200 B.C. Andean farmers once grew some 4,000 potato varieties, each with its own name, flavor, and use, ranging in size from tiny to gigantic and covering the color spectrum from indigo-purple to red, orange, yellow and white.

People use to eat what they grew locally and what was in season. With the increased appetite for produce that was out of season (eating strawberries in October as an example), and the increased demand to ship produce all over the world, farmers had to start breeding varieties that held up in boxcars, trucks, or ship’s cargo.

Now, even in the regions of Peru least affected by the modern market, only a few dozen potato varieties are widely grown.

Additionally, Seed producing companies and scientists have created genetically engineered seeds that will produce crops only once. After that, people from across the world, and specifically third world nations, have to depend on the seed companies to create more seeds, because the crop seeds will not be of any use.

Because of the genetically altered produce and seeds, we found it important to share these lessons with the students and teach them how to cultivate their own seeds; specifically those seeds with a slimy coating on them like tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, cantaloupe, watermelon, etc. It’s a slimy, moldy stinky process, but its fruition is the free, unaltered seeds to plant for the coming year. Click here for an instruction sheet.

We also talked about the amount of fossil fuels it take for produce that is out of season to be shipped all across the world. (See the “Did you know” below)

We discussed organizations like Seed Savers, http://www.seedsavers.org/. This is a member supported organization that saves and shares the heirloom seeds of our garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations. Through the efforts of these types of organizations, seeds for produce that was no longer grown are becoming available. Who knows, maybe one day we will have 4,000 varieties of potatoes back in existence? We encouraged the students to go to the Farmers Market in downtown St. Paul to sample the purple potato variety that has reintroduced to our tables.

Did you know?

· We put as much fossil fuels in our refrigerators as we do our cars?

· We consume 400 gallons of oil per year, per person, about 17% of our nation’s energy for agriculture? That includes tractors, tillers, fertilizer, insecticides, drying, packaging, shipping, etc…

· But getting the crop from seed to harvest only takes 1/5 of the total fossil fuel used for food.

· Each food item in a typical US meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles!

· If every US Citizen ate just one meal a week, any meal, composed of locally and organically grown meat or produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels every week.

ALC Students Enjoying the Harvest

2010-07-23T08:21:00.003-05:00

In the words of Nancy H. Jordon, "I plant flowers and vegetables. I harvest memories - and life." The students at ALC had the opportunity to harvest the crops they helped plant earlier this spring. We are having a lot of fun in the garden and making many friends and memories! Photo slide show below..

Andersen Corp. Employee's "Dig In" at the Giving Garden!

2010-07-21T15:15:00.025-05:00

Left to right in back: Scott Koenig and Steve Kirby. Left to right in front: Kristen Haak, Bryce Buckles, Ben Buckhahn, Curtis Gabbert, Dane Durch and Jessica Weber.

"Earth laughs in flowers."-- is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. However, recently at the RCS Giving Garden, our garden has looked more like "Earth laughs in weeds!" Andersen Corp. employees were in the garden today to help pick and donate 42+ pounds of produce. They also re-tied tomato plants and did "lots and lots and lots" of weeding! We had several aisles where the weeds were taking control of this organic garden. On a day where the temperatures reached the upper 80's, this group kept on working and did an absolutely amazing job in putting a huge dent in the weed population.

Andersen Corp is located at100 4th Avenue North, Bayport, MN 55003 www.andersenwindows.com. Andersen Corporation’s commitment to supporting the community dates back to the company’s founding in 1903. Through the years, Andersen has supported organizations such as the United Way, American Red Cross, local chambers of commerce and many others. Their charitable activities include donations, employee volunteerism and civic involvement in the communities where their company has presence.

We look forward to Andersen Corp. joining us again in the garden very soon. They left the RCS Giving Garden looking amazing, and instead of "laughing weeds", our garden is "laughing produce" once again! Thank You Andersen Corp.!

Gift from Lake Elmo Adventure Club Kids!

2010-07-19T14:51:00.003-05:00

The RCS Giving Garden received a wonderful surprise gift from the students from Lake Elmo Elementary's Adventure Club. The kids made a beautiful stepping stone for our garden that says "The Garden That Gives"! These students were out earlier this year and helped plant 110 donated strawberry plants. We will be placing this stepping stone in front of one of our garden signs so that all our garden vistitors can enjoy the artistic work of these students. Thank you you Lake Elmo Elementary Adventure Club!

ALC Students Mentoring SPIN Students!

2010-07-16T14:22:00.011-05:00

We had a very busy garden today! The ALC Students were here in the morning, as well as in the afternoon. The morning students mentored the SPIN students on many garden projects, and both groups worked on the following projects:

- Picking produce, weighing and donating (another 40+ pounds!)
- Pinching off the suckers on the tomato plants
- Tying up the tomatoes
- Planting replacement crops
- and of course... more weeding!

As you go through the video slide show below, you will see not only the hard work these students are putting into the garden; but something else... The older ALC students tapping into their creativity and expanding their understanding of the gardening they are teaching, the younger students learning not only gardening skills, but lessons by example, and above all, great memories!

07-13-10 - First Garden Donation!

2010-07-13T08:56:00.002-05:00

Today we donated our first harvest of veggies to Valley Outreach. 59.2 pounds of zucchini, onion and parsley! Much, much more to come!

Garden Shed Posts in Place!

2010-06-29T09:01:00.003-05:00

On Friday, June 18th, we were joined in the garden by ALC students Joe Klover and Shanan Martin, along with a guest friend of Shanan's, and their instructor Tom Wendt. After all of the lines were marked prior to digging, the ALC team, along with Project Management staff from RCS put up the corner posts for the garden shed. This next week we will be finishing the frame work, followed by another date for its' completion. The video below shows the progress of the day along with the progress of some of our plants in the garden!

Garden Tool Donations Needed!

2010-06-23T16:14:00.005-05:00

With the number of students and volunteers offering their time and talents in the garden, we are finding ourselves short on gardening tools! If you have old shovels, hoes, rakes, wheelbarrels, watering cans, ice cream buckets, small hand digging tools, pruners, etc., that you have thought about discarding... we have a very good home for them! Likewise for gardening gloves that you are ready to replace. We have many, many hands who come over from the schools and summer school programs who would love to give your tired pair of old gardeing gloves some extra miles. If you have items to donate, please contact us at 651.704.9000 ext. 750, or stop by; 11343 39th Street North, Lake Elmo, MN 55042. We would love to have you visit the garden!

Bringing Structure to a Garden

2010-06-18T15:30:00.008-05:00

Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything - except itself.
~May Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep, 1968

The ALC High School students, Nate, Joe and Dexter, along with their instructor, Tom Wendt were out in the garden today. They put up structures to support the tomatoes as they grow, along with building tee-pee structures for the zucchini and cucumber to climb on. They weeded several rows of onion, peppers, corn and broccoli, and tasted some fresh radishes and strawberries. The work was not without fun conversation!

Some of the talks were on;
- What is your favorite type of food?
- An exchange of favorite recipes that were shared by the students
- AND, the question that brought about some really fun discussions --- What is the strangest food you have ever tried?

Frog (the whole frog), possum, turtle, kidney's, fermented eggs were some of the offered "strange" dishes. The one that topped the list was an omlet that Joe shared that someone else had eaten and we will leave out the ingredients. Needless to say, a lot of "that's just not right" along with a lot of laughter in the garden took place...

The potatoes in our potato barrels have begun to grow, and we already have apples and pears!

Guys, you were a blast and we look forward to your next visit to the garden!

Planting for an Educational Harvest

2010-06-14T19:27:00.012-05:00

Last Wednesday was a very busy day in the garden! The kids from the Lake Elmo Elementary Adventure Club came out to the garden at 7:30 am to plant their seedlings. The kids from SPIN had planted broccoli and cauliflower seeds early this year. While they received a lot of TLC at school, it was time to free them from their temporary home and give their legs room to grow in the garden. Staff members Lisa and Malorie were joined by the planting talents of Hannah, Josh, Tyler, Izzy, Erin, Andrew, Lizzie, Amelia, Tera and Grace! They learned the importance of loosening the roots of the seedlings, giving a little drink of water in the transplant hole as well as topping it off with more H2O.

Since the Adventure Club helped plant our 110 donated strawberry plants, each helper was treated to taste a strawberry from the garden! Smiles were guaranteed was well as a few puckered mouths as the kids were able to taste the difference between home grown strawberries vs. the ones bought in the grocery stores. We again asked the question: Why shouldn’t you eat strawberries in October? (see our July 2009 blog on this topic)

At 9 am and again at noon we were joined by Tom Wendt and two groups of students from the Stillwater ALC High School. Here to get there their hands dirty were;

At 9:00: Tyler Maysack ,Riley Rolling, Brian Dickie, Jake Tobin, Chelsie Lindberg, Gus Membrez, Dexter Peltier, Devin Paulson, Nate Eldridge, Justin Anton, Michael Jackson-Anthony, David Meyer and Tony Howlette

At 12:00: Maria Anderson, Joe Klover, Conner Mulcahy and Evan Johnson

Both groups were very busy as they did the following projects:
 Planted VERY smelly plants around the perimeter of the garden to keep away the bunnies. These plants were donated by Chippewa Valley Growers
 Plant donated vegetables from Bergmann’s Greenhouse and Garden (Thank you Peggy!)
 Thinned the seedlings on the cucumber & zucchini mounds
 Weeded rows of seedlings
 Pulled out and set up all of the rain barrels
 Planted the potato barrel's!

Working in a garden, we all experience the satisfaction that comes from caring for something over time, while observing the cycle of life firsthand. Education is so much more than sitting in a class room and studying text books. The garden shows how complicated life can be; always in transition and constantly changing. Gardening attunes us to life’s struggles for renewal, richness and balance. Gardening every day and through the seasons keeps us in touch with the cycle of life - we can see plants each day through our seasons that are thriving, dying, seeding, fruiting, healthy and battling with disease. So is true in our own lives.

Self affirmation, community spirit, problem solving, digging, contemplation, simplifying---these are the qualities that foster a flourishing, fruitful garden and a flourishing, hands on education. As we work together, RCS and all of the students, to create the right conditions in the soil; growth will follow and the educational harvest will be plentiful.

Enjoy the video below! Thanks all! Joni

Adopted Broccoli

2010-06-03T16:45:00.003-05:00

The RCS Giving Garden recently adopted three broccoli plants! Chaunce and Naomi Stanton from St. Paul had extra broccoli seedings that needed a good home that could offer a loving environment, with good dirt, fresh water and lots of sunshine.

Well, the Giving Garden had all of those, so in the dirt they went to stretch those roots and grow. The newly installed irrigation system should ensure lots of liquid refreshment and the compost donation by Future Farms will continue to work it's magic in the soil.

We appropriately named these plants; Chaunce, Naomi and Stanton in honor of their donators and the produce that will soon be donated to the food shelf. Thank you Stanton's!

Partners in Gardening for Planting Day

2010-05-24T15:45:00.018-05:00

On Tuesday, May 18th, several Retail Construction Services staff were joined by staff members from UPS, Students from Stillwater’s ALC High School and United Way for our planting day. There was a morning shift that staked out the rows, planted, then laid out landscape fabrics and straw. The afternoon group laid out the irrigation system and planted a couple of other planting projects.

From UPS we were joined by: Lynne, Teresa, Jason, Christina, Mike and Andy.

From the ALC in the morning: Justin Anton, Brian Dickie, Nate Eldridge, Tyler Maysack, Gus Membrez, Andrew Peltier, and Jake Tobin. In the afternoon we were joined by: Marie Anderson, Paige Blanchard, Katie Cole, Lastasha Johnson, Ali Kalik, Joe Klover, Bobby Koopman, Angela LaCoursiere, Tiling Lee, Alisha Manke, and Zach Murtley.

From United Way Washington County East, we were joined by Joanne!

Watch our progress in the video below! "Thank you" to all of our new garden partners and friends who came out to get their hands dirty with us!

Spring Has Sprung in the North Country - It was Strawberry Day!

2010-05-10T12:53:00.016-05:00

10 May, 2010 - (More photos at the bottom of this article)

Spring has sprung in the North Country, and there is a whirl of activity in and around the RCS Giving Garden. After a great deal of deliberation, debate, and procrastination, we decided not to spray an herbicide on the garden to kill the weeds. We tapped into the most renewable form of energy, manpower. We pulled some, ignored some, and had our friendly neighbor Farmers, Neal and Deb Krueger, from Krueger's Christmas Tree Farm come and turn everything over for us.

John Vrieze of Future Farms in Baldwin, Wisconsin donated a couple of truckloads of manure; Buell’s Landscape Center generously delivered and dumped, and a couple of brave souls from the office did a little manual spreading to cover our Garden with nature’s nutrients, or as Joni terms it; spread the love.

The Kruegers returned to mix everything up, and we had Ameilia, Izzy, Josh and Grayson from the Lake Elmo Elementary Adventure Club over this morning to provide the renewable energy to plant our strawberry patch. The 110 strawberry plants were donated by our own Curt Kiesow, and Curt spent time with the Adventure Club kids instructing and educating. Curt grew up on a farm in Central Wisconsin, and felt right at home.

The District 834 Alternative Learning Center students, led by Tom Wendt, will begin construction of our Garden Shed on May 24th. The group has been collecting building materials from any and all resources, and is intent on constructing the Shed with all recycled and donated materials.

So, the Garden sits and waits until the next flurry of activity:

- We will be having our bigger planting day on Tues., May 18th, with a rain date of Thurs. May 20th.
We will be:
- mounding all of the rows, even those waiting for plants
- planting all the seed crops
- laying landscape fabric
- laying straw in the aisles
- connecting the irrigation system

Who is here to help that day?
- RCS Volunteers
- Stillwater ALC High School (they are here all day to help with everything)
- UPS volunteers

FOX 9 News may be out here that day or later in the month to cover the ALC building the garden shed.

Thanks to all who help in whatever small way. Your contributions are part of a network that strengthens our community in many ways.

- Gim Middleton

Krueger's Christmas Tree Farm Awakens the RCS Giving Garden

2010-04-29T11:24:00.014-05:00

Deb and Neil Krueger from Krueger's Christmas Tree Farm came out to awaken the RCS Giving Garden this morning! They did an inital tilling and will be returning to till in the compost donated by Future Farms, and a third time just before planting. We can't thank them enough for their generous donation of equipment, time and talent. Not only are they great neighbors, but two of the sweetest people to grace our garden. Thank you Deb and Neil!

SPIN Kids Seeds take Sprout!

2010-04-08T12:38:00.005-05:00

We received a photo update from the SPIN kids, and their broccoli and cauliflower seeds have taken root and sprouted! They will be thinning these and when ready, will help with transplanting. Sounds like the kids will be back in the garden on Friday morning's this summer, and once again we will be excited to hear over the loud speaker in the office... "The bus is here!"

The garden plan that the ALC High School students put together will be posted later this week, along with more exciting information on other schools and companies that will be joining us in the garden for 2010!

SPIN Kids back in the Garden!

2010-03-23T15:16:00.007-05:00

During spring break we were fortunate to have the SPIN kids red and white bus pull into our parking lot again! Yeah, the kids are back! For those who were not in the garden last summer, we talked about the garden and some of the activities that the kids did last year. We shared with the group the new garden plan that the ALC High School completed, and then rolled up our sleeves to get dirty.

With our average last frost date around May 10th, the earliest crops we can plant from seed are broccoli and cauliflower. While the recommendation is usually to plant transplants of these crops, the SPIN kids are going to test planting these from seed. They will be sending us progress photos on their seedlings as they begin to stretch their legs and grow. We also had a friendly competion start amongst a few Retail staff members who also planted seeds to see whose will be more fruitful. (I think the SPIN kids will win...)

Spring is here, and not only did it bring the sunshine and unearth the garden from the snow; it also brought back the most wonderful crop of kids! Thank you SPIN Kids!

2010 Garden Planning with the ALC Students!

2010-03-12T08:04:00.030-06:00

On Thursday, March 11th, three employees from Retail Construction Services, Molly Brendmoen, Joy Grognet and Joni Fletty, met with Washington County Master Gardener Paul Richtman at the Stillwater ALC school.

The overall objective was to come up with a new 2010 garden plan with the following considerations;

The garden is 60' x 110'
We need to rotate the crops
Last years production was 1,800 lbs, and we would like to meet if not exceed those donations
What we had too much of last year
Wish list vegetables & fruits for this year

We had decided that last year we had too many tomatoes; 6 rows of several plants, with three of those being cherry tomatoes! This year we will be adding; Carrots, sweet corn, spinach, peas, radish, green beans, green onions, strawberries and some herbs that recipients can use with the produce.

We had a blown up map of the 2009 garden with where each crop was planted and how much. We also had a blown up blank garden layout for the new 2010 garden. Paul Richtman then reviewed with the students the reason for crop rotation;

Reasons to Rotate Crops

Disease Prevention: The main reason to rotate crops is to prevent the spread of plant disease. Disease organisms can build up over time, resulting in eventual crop failure. Rotating crops keeps these organisms in check.
Insect Control: Crop rotation also helps reduce insect infestations.
Nutrient Balance: Different families of plants require different nutrients. By rotating your crops, you keep the soil from being depleted and can target soil amendments to keep your garden balanced.
Nutrient Enhancement: Some plants actually enhance the soil, so rotating them through the garden can produce free organic soil conditioning.

Simply put, crop rotation involves dividing the garden into sections, and planting a different plant family in each section every year. A systematic rotating schedule ensures that every section eventually receives each plant family. Most crop rotation systems have at least four sections, with four rotating plant groups.

Once the plant groups were identified with a color coding system, then we began brainstorming with the students on how many of each vegetable & fruit we would need. From there, pencils were picked up and the students started sketching out the new 2010 garden layout.

Because space is limited in a garden, a French method of mixing seeds will be tested this year. Combining spinach and carrot seed and sowing together will better utilize the space. The spinach will also soften the ground, making it easier for carrots to grow. In about 6 weeks the spinach will be finished and carrots will develop. Combining radishes and lettuce in the same row will also give good succession. These two test areas will be planted in 4 x 4 boxed areas at the edge of the garden. We then figured out which plants would be best planted as transplants and which would be better started as seeds.

The completed garden plan will be brought back to the RCS office to draft and the finished plan brought back to the school. The next plan is to calculate which plants can be donated as transplants in order to figure out what plants the students will start from seed in the near future. The ALC Students will be working in a mentoring program with the SPIN program kids from the Stillwater School District to work together in the garden. The SPIN kids will be out at RCS on March 17th for their very first visit of 2010.

Thank you ALC Students, we look forward to our continued partnership in the RCS Giving Garden!

ALC Students in Design Mode!

2010-02-12T09:00:00.017-06:00

On Thursday, February 4th, Gim Middleton and Dan Braun from our corporate office visited the Stillwater ALC students at their school to have a brainstorming sessions on the RCS Giving Garden shed they will be building.

The objectives discussed were:

All the material used will be reclaimed. They will be creating a solicitation letter to reach out to the community to collect unused & reclaimed doors, windows, lumber, etc to build the shed. RCS will be funding the entire cost to build the shed.
The shed will either have a green or solar roof.
There will be ample lighting to allow natural light into the shed and avoid the necessity for electricity.
That adequate storage will be available for storing all the gardening tools and structures.

The ALC students are a very creative group and there was a productive exchange of great ideas. One idea was to build a smaller 2nd story with 1/2 size windows on the top of the shed that would act as a greenhouse for seedlings. Another idea placed abstract windows in interesting angles, while other ideas included making use of the back of doors for storage and incorporating a waterfall from our rain barrel irrigation system to hydrate a portion of the green roof!

The shed size needed was determined to be approximately 96 sq. ft. or 8' x 12', and Gim took the general design layout back to our offices and converted the general layout into an AutoCAD design for the students. Once the students start receiving reclaimed doors, windows and lumber from their community solicitation, they will begin the final design phase of deciding how they will be placing each piece into the design. The photo above gives an idea of the creativity that will be applied to the design.

Their instructor, Tom Wendt, will be taking the students on a field trip to a Reclaim Center in order to supplement extra materials they may need. It will be a wonderful opportunity for the students to see that when buildings cannot be saved, those pieces that can, like doors, windows, fixtures, fireplace mantels, etc, become treasures that find new homes and have new life breathed into them.

We will follow ALC's progress as the design is completed and the construction begins. We are so lucky to have this creative group of students putting their ideas together to provide the garden with this new shed. Once moved to location, it will be placed by the garden for the public to view and see what can be done with reclaimed treasures and how a green or solar roof can function in the smallest of places!

ALC Students to Build Giving Garden Shed!

2010-01-18T13:28:00.011-06:00

The Stillwater ALC Students will be out to our corporate office in a few weeks to begin the planning stages for building a garden shed for the RCS Giving Garden.

They will be working with RCS mentor employees to plan the size and materials needed, trying to stay in our reuse / recycle goals, as well as review other requirements for the overall design. After the pre-planning is complete our employee mentors will be teaching the students how to develop the design in AutoCAD. AutoCAD is an industry leader in 3D CAD design, drafting, modeling, architectural drawing, and engineering software.

We are excited to spend this opportunity with the students, not only to further the needs of the Giving Garden, but to share our industry and the opportunities in the design and construction fields.

ALC Students Winterize Fruit Trees and Bushes

2009-11-19T14:44:00.016-06:00

November 19, the St. Croix Valley ALC students, along with their instructor, Tom Wendt, made their first visit to the Giving Garden.

Master Gardener, Paul Richtman, reviewed what the students had learned earlier in class time about winterizing fruit trees and bushes, the various methods and reasons. He expanded on those lessons and fielded a variety of very good questions that came up.

After measuring for correct length, the students cut 4” plastic corrugated drain tubing and placed around the trunks of the apple and pear trees to protect them for the winter. Ideally white tubing would be the best color to reduce the heat of the sun, but in keeping with our reuse, recycle theme, we used what was available as discarded tubing. RCS employees will go back and spray paint them white.

Paul reviewed with the students the winterization of the raspberry and blueberry bushes as well as the grape vines. In order to protect the blueberry bushes from our population of rabbits, the students used circumference mathematical calculations for measuring and then cut, placed and secured wire fencing around the bushes.

As Tom so eloquently phrased, “the seed has been planted”, and we look forward to a long-term partnership between The Giving Garden and ALC for years to come!

Krueger's Christmas Trees Turns Garden for the Winter Rest

2009-11-05T09:56:00.008-06:00

We want to extend a huge thank you to Neil Krueger from Krueger's Christmas Trees down the road for coming over and mulching and turning under the vegetation for the winter! Neil will be back in the spring to plow in mulch and get the garden ready for the 2010 donation season. Thank you Neil!

RCS Giving Garden Asleep for the Winter!

2009-10-30T10:58:00.023-05:00

Our garden has been put to bed for the winter, bringing to end the first year of our Giving Garden story. With just over 1,800 pounds of produce donated we learned much. Not only the trial and error of gardening, but of ourselves, our co-workers, our community, and of possibilities. We took the photo above and those below after that first snowfall in October and before we turned the garden for the season. It was too beautiful to pass up!

Thank you to the two owners of RCS, Steve Bachman and Gim Middleton for their use of the property, their support in this project, not laughing when I said that June was not too late to start a garden AND their expertise with constructing and installing a life saving irrigation system!

Thank you to our Sponsors: Buell's Landscape Center and their trooper Wendy; Bergmann's Greenhouse & Garden; Chippewa Valley Growers; Todd Bruchu; National Reprographics, LLC; The Master Gardener's Program through the U of M; Ivy Rose Design; Future Farm Food & Fuel, LLC; Houle's Farm, Garden & Pet; Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association; Coca Cola; Stillwater Farm Store; and the City of Lake Elmo.

Thank you to our Educational Participants: Stillwater School District's SPIN Program. Annette, Tammy, Katie, Jason, and all of the SPIN kids, we had a blast and miss seeing the little red and white school bus pull up! See you next summer!

Thank you to our recipients: Valley Outreach. Kate, Cara, and Nanc, you are wonderful inspirations for the community; United Way of Washington County East. Joan and Marna who with large smiles and large hearts, took the over-flow on days that we couldn't donate to Valley Outreach.

Thank you to our RCS employees. Not only those who were able to contribute their time and talents in the garden, but to those who contributed ideas along the way.

We recently received a call from Tom Wendt with the Stillwater District's ALC program (http://alc.stillwater.k12.mn.us/). We are excited to announce that the ALC students will be participating in our Giving Garden project and will be helping us take it from slumber to rebirth in the spring and beyond. We will keep you posted on their projects and their contributions to the Giving Garden project. Opportunities... not only to experience the fruition of this garden's produce to share, but the fruition of people and a community coming together, one seed at a time. With those opportunities, this becomes so much more than a garden.

Thank you all again, Joni

Last Harvest

2009-10-09T10:42:00.000-05:00

On October 9th, we picked the last that our garden had to offer to the food shelf. We have deer that recently found our garden and we harvested the remaining squash that they had not taste tested. We also had the opportunity to empty out our experimental potato barrels! We have had many lessons learned over the past year. While we had potatoes, we also had mushy potatoes at the bottom of the barrel. So next year, more drainage holes in the bottom, or no bottom. Also, no dirt next year, only peat moss. We had hoped that the students from the SPIN class could return to "roll out the barrel's", it proved to be a difficult task to contact everyone. Thank you SPIN class for you participation in our potato barrel project. As you can see, we had some success and look forward to working with you guys this next year!

Stillwater School District Employees Volunteer at the Garden

2009-09-28T11:16:00.008-05:00

Staff members from the Stillwater School District have volunteered their time to come over and pick produce in the RCS Giving Garden on Monday mornings! Today, Tammy Palmer and Amy Nasers picked 125 pounds of tomatoes. 33 pounds of Sun Golds, 60 pounds of regular tomatoes, 25 pounds of roma's and 7 pounds of yellow heirlooms! Thank you Stillwater School District!

RCS Giving Garden Reaches 1,000 Pounds of Donated Food!

2009-09-21T13:38:00.007-05:00

On Monday, September 21st, the RCS Giving Garden has reached the 1,000 pound mark and has donated 1,100.7 pounds of produce to the local food shelves!

What Our Garden Reveals

2009-09-17T09:24:00.013-05:00

Our giving garden reveals the abilities of this company and its people. It also shows how complicated life and business can be; always in transition and constantly changing. Gardening attunes us to life’s struggles for renewal, richness and balance. Gardening every day and through the seasons keeps us in touch with the cycle of life or the cycle of business - we can see plants each day through our seasons that are thriving, dying, seeding, fruiting, healthy and battling with disease. So is true in our own lives and in business.

Self affirmation, community spirit, digging, contemplation, simplifying---these are the qualities that foster a flourishing, fruitful garden and a flourishing business. As we work together within our company to create the right conditions in the soil, the heart of a company; growth will follow and the harvest will be plentiful. It’s not only the fruition of its produce to share, but the fruition of a community and a company coming together, one seed at a time.

Veggie Pizzas

2009-08-21T13:56:00.005-05:00

Students from the SPIN program came out today and made delicious veggie pizzas using some of the produce that was harvested form the Giving Garden. (Click here for the recipe that the kids followed today). While this is the last time for the students to help out before school begins, the students and their families are encouraged to stop by at any time to check on the progress of the Giving Garden. The kids also presented RCS with a large tomato thank you card signed by evryone that is hanginin in the RCS lobby.

An RCS staff member will be contacting the SPIN students this fall so that they can come back and help “roll out” the potato barrel’s that they created back in July. Thanks to all the SPIN students for you help with the Giving Garden this summer and we will see back you soon!

QUITE CONTRARY!

2009-08-12T16:27:00.004-05:00

Pioneer Press 08-12-2009
By Bob Shaw bshaw@pioneerpress.com

If lawns had legs, they would be running scared.

This summer, volunteers are tearing up the manicured lawns of corporations, replacing them with "giving gardens" to raise produce for the food shelves.

Click here for the full Pioneer Press story on the RCS Giving Garden!

Students Donate to Local Food Shelf

2009-08-07T16:53:00.010-05:00

Today students from the Stillwater Spin program harvested some of the vegetables from the RCS giving garden. The students then came inside and weighed and logged each type of produce using a digital scale. A total of 42 lbs of produce was harvested and donated! The kids decided to have some fun with the scale and all jumped on and as you can see from the photo below, we had 531 lbs of kids working in the Giving Garden today!

The Students then headed out to the Valley Outreach Food Shelf to drop off the 42 lbs of fresh produce, tour the food shelf with staff members and get a better understanding of how their efforts are helping those in need.

U of M Master Gardeners Visit

2009-08-05T15:16:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Master Gardener's from the University of Minnesota's Extension Program paid us a visit to check on progress and continue their mentoring. While walking near the squash plants, they noticed that some of them had a "powdery mildew" that we will have to end up treating with an organic fungicide. Never would have seen that had the experts not been out here! Thank you to our Master Gardeners. To read more about Master Gardener's working in Washington County click here.

Tricia Jorgenson, Karen Thielman, Ron Pierce, Paul Richtman

Worm Composting Boxes

2009-07-31T12:30:00.007-05:00

Today, students from the Stillwater School District’s Spin Program created red worm composting boxes that will eventually be used to fertilize the RCS Giving Garden. The students drilled air holes in the tops of the recycled boxes and filled them with shredded recycled paper, compost, water and cardboard pieces. For detailed instruction on how to create a worm compost box click here.

Next, it was time for the students to get their hands dirty by adding in discarded organic food scraps that have been saved by the RCS employees over the last couple of weeks and finally, the students mixed in the red worms. During the process, the students learned some interesting facts about worms and the roles they play in nature, which can be found here.

After the worm compost boxes were sealed and moved out of the sun, the students added compost/dirt to the potato barrels and then made covers for the rain barrels, which consisted of cutting up chicken wire and mosquito netting and forming the pieces over the rain barrels that the students help make a couple of weeks ago.

The kids also thoroughly enjoyed being interviewed by a reporter from the St. Paul Pioneer Press who was visiting for an upcoming article on the RCS Giving Garden.

RCS Garden featured in The Spotlight

2009-07-29T14:35:00.006-05:00

Spotlight on Community Education:
How does your garden grow?

That’s what our Stillwater Community Education Spin students are asking the Lake Elmo based Retail Construction Services (RCS) corporate office. At the beginning of June, project organizers received the green light to develop a "Giving Garden" on the company’s front lawn! The garden is intended to provide fresh produce to local food shelves and bring the community together. Spin students were invited to participate in several gardening projects scheduled throughout the summer.

Click here to read full story

First Donation

2009-07-22T15:14:00.005-05:00

RCS dropped off the first donation to the Valley Outreach Food Shelf (1lb of lettuce, 3lbs of zucchini, peppers and cherry tomatoes). This donation is the first of many more donations that will take place as the RCS Giving Garden continues to grow!

Bee Hives and Rain Barrels

2009-07-17T14:45:00.014-05:00

Local Beekeeper, Earl Salper, representing the Minnesota Beekeepers Association came out today to speak with RCS Volunteers and several students from the Stillwater SPIN program. Earl will be placing 1-2 hives next to the Giving Garden in the upcoming weeks as an added benefit to the garden!

The Students learned about the important roles that bees play in nature, how bee hives are created and maintained, and several other fun facts which can be found by clicking here. Also discussed, was how and potentially why millions of honey bees have been disappearing around the country. For the link to the PBS program “Silence of the Bees” that is an in-depth look at the search to uncover what is killing the honeybee, click here or visit http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/introduction/38/

After a quick warm up inside and a minor rain delay, Retail Construction Services Employees then gave a demonstration to the students on how to build a rain barrel as well as the reasons and benefits for capturing and reusing collected rain water. RCS employees showed the kids how easily the rain barrels will fill up using this calculator. The students helped to build each barrel that will be attached to the three different downspouts on the RCS Corporate office building

Thanks to everyone for coming out today and braving the October like weather!

Spud Barrel Update

2009-07-10T14:01:00.008-05:00

A few progress photos. Even though they were planted a the same time, the potatoes in the darker barrels seem to be groing better than the ones in the white barrels...

White Barrel Dark Barrel

Stillwater Students Help Out Again

2009-07-10T13:22:00.021-05:00

As part of a continuing program, several students from the Stillwater School District’s Spin Program came out again today to help with installing garden posts, stringing up tomato plans and building trellis’ for the cucumber plants.

Before the work began, the students learned about how Ethylene Gas is often used to ripen vegetables and fruits that are prematurely picked (click here for more information on Ethylene gas) and how using green bags to store fruits and vegetables makes them last longer. Some interesting facts about tomatoes and cucumbers were then discussed like how most of the tomatoes produced today are turned into salsa and not Ketchup (click here for the fun facts)

The students then helped install several posts and stringed up twine between each post to be used as support for the growing bean plants. Using slipknots, the students then attached several tomato plants to the rows of twine above to help guide their growth.

Lastly, the kids assembled about sixteen trellis structures that were placed over each cucumber plant. The trellis’ were made out of recycled 1”x1” posts and attached together at the top with a bolt/nut and garden twine. The students then threaded twine through three pre-drilled holes on each leg of the trellis for further stability and guidance for the cucumber plants.

A great time was had by all!

Stillwater Students Create "Spud Barrels"

2009-07-02T15:12:00.017-05:00

Today, volunteers of the RCS Giving Garden worked with ten middle school students from the Stillwater School District’s Spin Program to participate in the “Spud Barrel Project”.

When the students arrived they learned a little history about potatoes as well as some fun and interesting potato facts (Click here for fun the fun potato facts we covered). Then it was time to get their hands dirty and create the planting soil, which was a combination of dirt and compost. Groups of students partially up each barrel, planted 4-6 small seed potatoes in each barrel and then watered.

The intent of the Spud Barrel Project is that when the potatoes have about 6-8” of foliage, more of the same soil mixture is then placed on top and the process is repeated until the barrel is full. The students will monitor and maintain each of the four barrels throughout the growing season. (Click here for directions to create your own Spud Barrel)

Since there was some extra time, a few of the students also helped out by watering the fruit trees and others helped with stringing up some of the tomato plants.

RCS Giving Garden featured in Stillwater Gazette

2009-07-01T16:05:00.008-05:00

Below is an article on the RCS Giving Garden that was featured in yesterday's issue of the Stillwater Gazette. For the link to the story, click here

Community garden takes root in Lake Elmo
By LAUREN ANASTOS
(Created: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 1:41 PM CDT)

LAKE ELMO - Looking to combine education, environmentalism and community service, a local construction company recently converted its lawn into a community garden that will be used to stock the local food shelf and teach elementary students the basics of agriculture.

Inspired by a story about a community vegetable garden in New York City, Retail Construction Services Vice President Joni Fletty pitched the idea to the company's owners. Within a month, preparations were underway for the 0.2-acre "Giving Garden," which was planted early last week.

Fletty said the project is a natural fit for Retail Construction, which specializes in "green" projects and looks for ways to support the communities in which it works."

There was so much opportunity outside our doors to provide fresh, healthy options for people. Our real estate was begging for more than just a mower to drive over it," she said.

Before long, the idea blossomed to include a teaching opportunity, and Fletty said she expects children from Lake Elmo Elementary School - located a block away from the company's 39th Street offices - will get involved with the project when school resumes."

As a mom, I am aware how so many children don't know where our food comes from," Fletty said. "So Lake Elmo is incorporating the Giving Garden into the curriculum for this coming school year."

Specifically, Fletty said children will help harvest the food in the fall and plant the following year's crop in the spring. Once the produce is harvested, it will be donated to Valley Outreach, a Stillwater food shelf."It is about not only planting seed in the garden, but also in the minds of children," Fletty said, noting that ideas cultivated at a young age can lead to something big and wonderful in the future.

In order to make the best use of their funds, Retail Construction solicited advice from three Master Gardeners through the University of Minnesota's Extension Program.

With the support of 20 volunteers and several community groups, a portion of the garden was planted with herbs, beans, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, squash, melons and blueberries last week.

Fletty said she was astonished how much time, material and funding was donated to the project by community groups and her Retail Construction colleagues."We expected only a little support, but once we told the story, we were really surprised about the excitement concerning the project," she said. "It has truly been a community effort."Donors and community partners include: Buell's Landscape Center, Bergmann's Greenhouse, National Reprographics, Ivy Rose Design, Lake Elmo Elementary School, Chippewa Valley Growers and Lake Elmo resident Todd Bruchu.

Those interested in volunteering or learning more about the Giving Garden are encouraged to visit http://www.rcsgivinggarden.blogspot.com/.

Giving Garden Irrigation System

2009-06-26T15:08:00.008-05:00

The irrigation system for the RCS Giving Garden was installed yesterday. A big shout out to RCS owners Steve Bachman and Gim Middleton for designing the system, purchasing/installing the equipment and donating their time. The irrigation system is designed with timers so that all areas of the garden will receive the appropriate amount of water at planned intervals according to the specific vegtable type. Fantastic job Steve and Gim!

Planting

2009-06-23T15:43:00.010-05:00

Finally, the RCS Giving Garden has begun to take shape. Today we planted herbs, beans, tomato's, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, squash, melons, watermelon, blueberries and others. Thanks to the employees of RCS and Wendy from Buells Landscape Center in Hastings, the entire process took about three hours.
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Work Has Begun

2009-06-18T09:22:00.016-05:00

The RCS Giving Garden is starting to take shape. Todd Bruchu brought over his John Deere yesterday evening and turned up our lawn. Ready for planting next week!

Donors

2009-06-17T11:15:00.018-05:00

RCS would like to thank and recognize the supporters who have graciously donated all of the vegtables, seeds, shrubs, trees and materials for the RCS Giving Garden. Please support these donors:

Buell's Landscape Center

Chippewa Valley Growers

Future Farm Food and Fuel

Bergmanns Greenhouse

Ivy Rose Design

National Reprographics

Retail Construction Services

Houle's Farm, Garden & Pet

Minnesota Hobby Bee Keepers Association

Coca-Cola

Ground Breaking

2009-06-17T09:40:00.002-05:00

Ground breaking on the RCS Giving Garden is scheduled to be completed by the end of this week. Todd Bruchu of Lake Elmo, MN will be dontaing his time and equipment to help break up and till the soil so that we can begin planting next week. Thank you Todd!