Orillia Community Gardens (OCG) – January 2017 Newsletter!
Happy New Year! The countdown to spring is on, and this one will be OCG’s 9th growing season! We would like to thank all our members, supporters, and volunteers for bee-ing so grape. Your enthusiasm, hard work, and patience as we approach the final stage of Incorporation as a Horticultural Society is very mulch appreciated.
Organizational Update
OCG’s “Acting Board” is berry excited to announce that they’ve completed the challenging process of developing the “Orillia Community Gardens and Horticultural Society Constitution” which will be made available to new and existing members for review beginning Saturday, January 28th, 9:00 a.m. at the Orillia Public Library Farmers Market and during subsequent public events listed below!
NEW Community Garden Policy + Co-ordinator for the City of Orillia
The City of Orillia has passed a Community Garden Policy which can be viewed here starting on page 33. In the city’s 2017 budget, $10,000 has been allocated to hire a part-time Community Garden Co-ordinator and to our understanding, another $10 000 to support community garden infrastructure. We hope to know more soon, and details will be made available on our Facebook page.
Upcoming Events – “Market in your Calendula”
Wiigwaas Gitigaan “Birch Garden” Lakehead Winter 20
1. March 18th, Saturday, 1pm, Orillia Community Gardens 2017 Info Session, @ Orillia Native Women’s Group, 110 Matchedash St. – Are you curious about different gardening opportunities in and around Orillia? Would you like to know more about how you can get growing this season? Join us to hear about all the different options there are for getting your hands in the soil in 2017. Tell the world, bring a friend!
2. April 22nd, Saturday, 9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., 7th Annual Orillia Seedy Saturday @ the Orillia Farmer’s Market & the Orillia Public Library
3. August 26th, Saturday, the 2nd Annual Orillia Food Festival (Volunteers and Organizers wanted for Festival Working Group – contact us or orillia.food.council@gmail.com )
Stay tuned for more upcoming spring events, or visit our events calendar! If you have a community food related event lettuce know!
VOLUNTEERING WITH OCG
If you’d like to volunteer – email us w/ subject line “Volunteer” and one of our volunteer coordinators will reply to your request. Specify whether you would like to join either the OCG newsletter and/or OCG Volunteer list. We have a list of volunteer roles and tasks on our website – as well as a lot of other useful information.
FILL OUT OUR COMMUNITY FOOD GROWING INITIATIVE SURVEY
Help us “map” the growth in our Community
We are creating an up to date Map/Directory of Community Gardens / Community Food Growing Initiatives (CFGI) in Orillia & Area (surrounding townships, communities). We have created this voluntary survey linked here to assist us in gathering the relevant and appropriate data to publicly profile the diverse and various initiatives in our community. If you are organizing or thinking about organizing a growing initiative please contact us or fill out this survey –
Prototype CFGI Map/Directory
https://orilliacommunitygardens.wordpress.com/community-garden-map/ . Did you know there are over 20 unique initiatives in and around Orillia? There may be more – help us map the growth in our community!
FIND AND FOLLOW US ONLINE
We have a Website https://orilliacommunitygardens.wordpress.com/ !
We have a Facebook page (with 431 likes!) featuring gardening tips and updates www.facebook.com/orilliacommunitygardens
We have a Facebook group (with 491 members!) join for informative community discussion and event invitations – https://www.facebook.com/groups/67069663352/
We also have a twitter account (with 544 followers!) https://twitter.com/orilliagrows
If you would like to unsubscribe from this newsletter peas reply to orilliacommunitygardens@hotmail.com with subject “Unsubscribe me”
Seed you soon!
in SOILidarity,
Orillia Community Gardens
Orillia Community Gardens 