Tonight the Urban Agriculture Task Force will present its report to City Council, complete with a comprehensive set of policy recommendations developed through an 18-month stakeholder process. The City Council meeting begins at 7pm in the Contois Auditorium at City Hall. Download the report [PDF].

Where & When

September 20, 2011

5:00PM-10:00PM

American Flatbread
Burlington Hearth

115 St. Paul Street

Burlington, Vermont

Please join us for an American Flatbread Benefit Bake in support of the Healthy City program and our nine vibrant Burlington school gardens on Tuesday, September 20.

This event will raise awareness about the importance of community-based gardening, and raise funds for garden-based education and summer taste tests. American Flatbread will graciously contribute a portion of the cost of each flatbread sold from 5pm-10pm. We hope to see you there!

Sincerely,

Jessica Hyman & Jenn McGowan

Friends of Burlington Gardens

UVM is offering a week long professional certificate in Food Systems this summer! It’s great to see the unfurling of UVM’s new Food Systems Spire of Excellence!

Here’s the description of the program and a link to the Certificate’s website:

You may not have heard yet – the news is still pretty fresh to us as well.

The Burlington Food Council was just charged by the City Council with studying the issues of urban agriculture and providing policy recommendations. We hope this project will result in city policies that resolve confusion (for example, why can you only keep 4 chickens in your back yard? What about goats, pigs, or a cow?) and create  comprehensive policies that will encourage people to grow victory gardens and raise more of their own food.

This project is up for The Skinny Pancake’s Community Gardening Grant and we need your support.  The $500 grant will be awarded to one lucky local food project on May 1 based on a popular vote.

I looked over the list and was overwhelmed by all the good projects that deserve our support! Luckily we all get 3 votes so we don’t have to choose between school gardens,  community beehives and urban agriculture.

Vote here and thanks for your support!

Hunger Banquet – Check it out on Facebook
Saturday, March 5, 2011
5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Main Street Landing
Free and open to the public

This event sounds really cool! Oxfam is celebrating the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day. Governor Madeline Kunin is hosting (among others!) and two really intriguing speakers:
- Ms. Lindsey Bolger, Director of Coffee Sourcing & Relationships at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
- Ms. Yvette Cissé, an Oxfam America partner, shea butter farmer, and member of MoBioM farming cooperative, Bougouni, Mali

Fletcher Allen Health Care is offering a great series of free classes in Burlington this spring focused on food choices and food issues!

Cooking with Winter Vegetables, and Helpful Tips on Nutrition and Training for a Marathon, among others, caught my eye!

Check out their full calendar here.

The Council’s December meeting was a bit of a step back to evaluate where the council is headed. One of the themes that emerged from the group was the need for planning and assessment of the local food system.

Bart Westdijk passed along some great resources for this work. He referred us to a local food systems model created by Ginger Nickerson (page 10 of this report), saying, “I think this might provide a framework to think about how to set goals around Food Council work: what areas do we want to cover/how do we look at Burlington’s Food System?”

As we discussed planning for the Legacy Project and the Municipal Plan, Bart passed along this tidbit, “In terms of thinking about writing a Food Chapter to the municipal plan: here’s an example of how that works in the local energy world. VNRC has a section on their website talking about how to write an energy chapter for your town”.

Interesting fodder for our next meeting in February!