Living in Technicolor

The ReTreeUS Farm - our "Emerald City"

Spring has always been my favorite season. Like the film The Wizard of Oz, it's a time when the black and white shades of winter suddenly lift to reveal a Technicolor dream world--only it's real. And as we dive into planting orchards with vibrant, smiling kids, the Emerald City comes alive more than ever.

Fifth graders transform what was a rather lifeless zone in front of their rural Maine school  into a large orchard and outdoor classroom. The foresight and support of their teachers and community were an essential part of the process.

On May 2nd, we finished planting our last orchard of the school year, bringing our total to eight educational orchards in the past two years. Participating students range in age from 2 to 18 years old, and we are often joined by community volunteers and teachers aged 24 to 74.

High school students near the coast plant a peach tree in the large orchard they helped add to their already-active school garden space. Many thanks to volunteers from FoodCorps Maine and the Good Tern Food Coop, as well as supportive teachers from the school.

Everyone loves to be involved! Working together on this inspiring project, planting food-producing trees for themselves and future generations, students feel something deep within them spring to life as well--before our eyes, their connection with the earth and with each other changes from black and white to color.

To be sure, this enlivened connection is an invaluable benefit of the ReTreeUS program. Alongside the innumerable other benefits of a school-based agriculture program (e.g. increased academic and social skills), ReTreeUS receives the benefit of a thousand enthusiastic helpers--making it happen in a way that we could not do alone. We thank the students, staff and communities who rallied to make this year's orchards a success.

This young gardener came with his mother and sister to help ReTreeUS plant a partnership orchard at Wolfe's Neck Farm.

When a thoughtful third grader placed her four-leaf clover in the hole with the tree she planted, when the high school senior's shoes got so muddy from a day of planting that he took them off and watered the trees barefoot, when the two-year-old adopted a new favorite word: "Compost!", when the fifth graders shared the shovel even when they didn't want to, we knew that we were leaving these trees in the best of care.

If this story brings a little more Technicolor to your life, you can join our many supporters by becoming a member, or apply for your own school orchard today!

Spring is Sprouting

As a naturalist, farmer, and yogini, I tend to draw parallels between the seasons of wildlife and forests, our fields, and our bodies, minds and spirits. The natural world is our greatest teacher, showing us what to do for our crops, as well as how to take care of our selves--and we are then again nourished by nature and farming.

Winters at ReTreeUS are spent in semi-hibernation--we rest our bodies with all the other animals, while simultaneously gearing up for the growing season ahead. When we follow and flow with the natural rhythms around us, winter allows for--and often even yields--as many "crops" as the last year's summer season!

In mid-winter, ReTreeUS Co-founder Richard Hodges met with students at Durham Community School, who were charged by Jumpstart Our Youth with the mission of voting for their favorite local non-profit. The group who received the most votes would then receive JOY Grant funding from Jobs for Maine Graduates. Last month, we were honored to receive the news that DCS students voted for ReTreeUS! Now, we look forward to working with those same students at Wolfe's Neck Farm, where ReTreeUS is installing our first partnership orchard this spring. 

All this new support has enabled and inspired us to start our seedlings earlier this year. Our brassicas are sprouting up nicely in the reused/recycled egg carton containers you see here:

Reuse your egg cartons as seed-starting vessels. You'll save money and our planet! 

Next week, we will construct a hoop house where these baby plants will grow until they're ready to transplant into soil and/or find a new home through our farm stand. We encourage our participating students, members (and everyone!) to incorporate greens like these into every meal!

Find our greens in Durham, Maine, and find easy ways to enjoy them by looking at ReTreeUS recipes in our older blog posts. In addition, one way to find recipes for green smoothies is by following Freeport Yoga Company on facebook.

And so it comes full-circle. We rest and restore in winter, then shed cold and heaviness as we welcome spring. Eating nourishing, chemical-free produce can help us do that! ReTreeUS makes organic food more accessible to people of all income levels. And when humans are well-fed and nourished, the earth thanks us, too. To find out more about ReTreeUS food, visit www.retreeus.org.

We wish you all a light and healthy spring!

Warming Up

We ReTreeUS co-founders love indulging in homemade pizza and music, but nothing warmed us up this winter like feeling the love from our community. Last week, we gathered friends and ReTreeUS members for our first Androscoggin Open Mic. The plan was to play and listen to music, serve pizza...and spread the word about our goals and accomplishments thus far.

Setting the stage for the evening, and for a great year to come!

Though the road conditions were less than ideal, heavy snow held off long enough--and friends were enthusiastic enough--to fill the room with musicians, pizza-lovers, and many who appreciated the ReTreeUS message enough to join or renew their membership.

Attendees watched a slideshow of pictures from last year's orchard plantings and educational programs and heard our plans for the coming year. We are warming up our community, and warming up for the spring to come.

Friends enjoy creating music as we warm up the winter.

This week, we will meet with Wolfe's Neck Farm to decide the location of their partnership orchard to be planted along with another four school orchards in Denmark, Rockland, and Freeport this April.

In addition, our home orchard program is taking off! We've added a few clients interested in donating $200 to have three mature fruit trees planted in their yard.* This is a great way for us to promote sustainability for families, the planet, and for our organization. Those investing in a small home orchard not only support our programs, but also ensure that we can continue planting school orchards at no charge.

We're warming up for the exciting work (read: workout) of growing a healthier planet again this year. Join us at www.retreeus.org!

*Add $100 to the home orchard investment for each additional tree.

Resolution Solution

It may still be mid-winter in Maine, but ReTreeUS is already gearing up for another year of tree and vegetable growth! With any luck, our exciting plans will align with your New Year's resolutions to improve the health of your body and the planet in 2013.

After planting four school orchards and 1,000 trees in 2012, we plan to focus our attention this year on four more school orchards and a full-fledged farm! Visit our farm stand and fruit shack in Durham, Maine for produce and fruit tree saplings which will beautify your home and provide quality produce such as apples, plums and pears for many years to come.

For local supporters, now is the time to contact us to sign up for a share or learn more about the ReTreeUS Fruit Shack.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy New Year! We hope to see you in Durham in the summer!

Come Visit US

ReTreeUS is happy to join Wolfe's Neck Farm in inviting you to their Fall Festival this Saturday, October 13th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Join ReTreeUS co-founder Richard Hodges at Wolfe's Neck for many fall festivities, including fun at the ReTreeUS booth!

Co-founder Richard Hodges shows off native plum tree saplings last spring.

 
Stay tuned for more details, but we will likely have seed-planting, tree grafting, and more hands-on fun with trees and plants. Hope to see you there!

Happy Apple Trees

In preparation for the colder months, in appreciation of our sponsors (especially Coast of Maine, FedCo and Adams County Nursery, and in honor of Johnny Appleseed's birthday yesterday...I gave our nursery some extra love today.

Our apples, cherries, peaches and plums were happy this summer to be weeded by my brother, who was here for our wedding and meanwhile earned the title of a legendary, extraordinary, ReTreeUS volunteer. He opened up extra space and made sure the trees were receiving adequate sun and water.

Today, I cleared more clover from the trees he didn't have time to weed, added compost to those he had weeded, and put up more fabric to deter deer from hopping over our nursery fence. (Challenges like fencing seem more and more worth the risk for hungry deer in the winter months, and I suspect that time will be here before we know it.)

You'll see the fabric on our deer fence in the background of this photo from our wedding day.

The fabric surrounding our nursery provides a creative and chemical-free warning to deer who might not otherwise notice that the height of our fence is (just barely) too high for them to jump over. Which helps us out because saplings are a fawn's favorite treat.

We have sort of taken a Johnny Appleseed approach to the deer problem by planting hundreds of trees outside our fence. Hopefully, the deer will have enough crab apples outside the nursery that they won't be tempted by our larger, grafted trees inside.


It is appropriate, on this celebration of good old Johnny's birthday, that FedCo and Adams County Nursery have renewed their support for ReTreeUS by donating more large and healthy fruit trees to be planted in this year's orchards. Many thanks to those loyal businesses, as well as our new sponsor: Coast of Maine! Not only do we have plenty of trees for the school year, but we also now have more quality, organic compost to give last year's trees a boost.

In addition, BuildASign.com has sent off our educational signage, which we plan to install in last year's participating schools this fall.

We look forward to visiting those 1,000 students who helped us plants trees at their schools last year, and to meeting 1,000 more students this school year! We couldn't do it without our sponsors, our donors, our volunteers...which includes many of you who read our blog! Thank you for your support, and for helping us grow a healthier planet.

Fallready?

For those of us working and volunteering with ReTreeUS, the brightly colored trees and cooler temperatures of autumn really came by surprise. Is it that time already?

Turns out, it really is!

...Time for visiting our four school orchards from last year, and installing our signs which will not only thank those who donated to our Kickstarter campaign, but will also teach students about some of most the basic reasons we plant fruit trees at all.

Here are a couple of designs we plan to use for one sign, which will be personalized for each participating school, acknowledging students, staff and special sponsors, etc. in the space provided:

Thanks to our sign sponsor, BuildASign.com, and Kickstarter donors, we will also install information about the history of apples in Maine (where all our schools are located at this time), pollination, and discerning a wormy or diseased apple, for example, from a few harmless spots.

Daniel Feller, whose blog can be found at www.takingontheyear.blogspot.com, constructed benches for each school where students can sit and observe or enjoy the serenity of the space they helped create.

Meanwhile, four new schools are on board to receive orchards this school year, and many more are on the wait list for future years! We are thankful (but not surprised) that many schools see the value of producing food locally and educating their students about environmental values.

With the support of our scholastic partners, volunteers, sponsors and members, ReTreeUS is fallready to dive into a second exciting school year!