Teaching Hamsters How to Feed Themselves!

Sustainable Gardening Series
@ RE Sources' new community garden:
The RE Patch!
March 26th - April 30th

Learn how to make your world more sustainable from the ground up through our series of garden-based classes and workshops. The six-part series will cover a variety of sustainable gardening techniques and put those skills to practice with hands-on workshops in RE Sources’ on-site community garden. Learn about permaculture design, crop rotation, rain water systems, composting methods, forest garden planning, native foraging, and so much more!

Classes begin THIS SATURDAY, so register today by calling 360.733.8307 or emailing HannahC@re-sources.org. Registration scholarships are available! Here's your chance to learn how to feed your household on your know-how and toil, you homesteader you.

If you'd like to donate starts or materials to help the RE Patch get rolling, check out our wish list here or call Hannah at 360.733.8307. Keep in mind, we spoil all our donors!

1. Introduction to Permaculture: Principles, Ethics, Theory Saturday, March 26th, 9am – 1pm ($35)
An introductory course outlining the principles of permaculture and the big picture concepts that inform the design process. Will also include the history, examples of what is happening in the Northwest and beyond, and how you may begin to incorporate permaculture into your own life.

2. Introduction to Permaculture Design: Design strategies and techniques
Sunday, March 27th, 9am – 1pm ($35)
Learn how to use permaculture methods to assess a site, develop a plan, and techniques to make your plan a reality. Students will work in small groups to problem solve and walk through the design process for RE Sources’ community garden or their own site.

3. Seed starting, garden planning and crop rotation
Thursday, March 31st 6:30pm – 8:30pm ($20)
Learn how to start vegetables from seeds in your own home, while developing a plan that suits your garden and kitchen needs. Basic Northwest timing and techniques will be covered to aid in healthy plant succession and winter garden potential.

4. Edible Landscape Installation
Saturday, April 9th 9am – 1pm ($35)
In this hands-on workshop you will learn techniques for transforming your lawn into a food producing and ecologically friendly landscape. Topics and skills covered will include sheet mulching, building raised beds, and planting strategies.

5. Compost and Soil Health Thursday, April 14th - 6:30pm – 8:30pm ($20) Healthy soil is the key to healthy food. Learn about soil, how to nurture it and transform your food and yard waste into rich compost through a variety of techniques. Topics will include soil, organic matter management, organic amendments, composting styles, worm bins, and where to source materials locally.

6. Forest Gardening
Saturday, April 30th - 9am 3pm ($35)
Forest gardening strives to mimic the structure and function of natural ecosystems. In this hands-on workshop, learn how to work with nature to produce food, medicine, habitat, and other useful products. Cascadia Mushrooms will also be showing us the process and joy of mycology in your garden!



Enroll in individual classes, or save big when you enroll in the six-week series for just $150! Enrollment fee assistance is available. Email HannahC@re-sources.org or call 733.8307 to register. Class space is limited, so don’t wait.

For more information on how you can become involved in our RE Patch Community Garden, please visit our Community Garden page. Classes and workshops will be taught by Homestead Habitats and the Bellingham Urban Garden Syndicate (BUGS).

Homestead Habitats is a Bellingham-based holistic landscaping contracting group. Their vision is to improve local food security and community self-sufficiency through transforming homes and properties into healthy modern homesteads.

Bellingham Urban Garden Syndicate (BUGS) is a support coalition of urban agriculturalists in the greater Bellingham area focused on promoting, sustaining, and advocating for urban agriculture in Bellingham through education, garden support, community action, and making local healthy food accessible.

Special Thanks to our generous sponsors:

This Country Used to Make Things

This country used to make things—truly great things that were the envy of countries round the world.  In fact, I am old enough to remember when Sears and Roebuck used to sell USA-made Craftsman’s tools that carried a life-time guarantee.  I grew up in an America that made a full 90% of the products we used.  What happened?  

The answer to that is simple: The corporations—publicly licensed entities given tax breaks because they ostensibly serve the public good—shipped our once proud factories overseas to cut costs and increase profits.  And with our factories went our jobs and the promise of the middle class we had worked so very hard to establish in post-Depression America. 

And now our country largely bereft of factories and manufacturing jobs is being told by those very same corporations that we now have to ship our natural resources to China—in the form of Powder River Basin coal—to power the factories and people overseas. 

While I have absolute and total sympathy for the unemployed (been there, done that) in this county and in our country, I cannot help thinking that a coal terminal at Cherry Point represents a large nail in the quickly closing coffin of US-based manufacturing.  More tragically, this prospect of coal clouds our future and represents a u-turn in the once bright trajectory of this region.

When jobs are at stake emotions run very high, I understand that.  But that is when true and visionary leadership must arise and inject common sense.  Certainly, we can develop local jobs that do not also accelerate the loss of US manufacturing jobs as well as jeopardize property values, the prospects of future enterprises like waterfront redevelopment, and our precious quality of life and health. 

We once were smarter than this and will not regain our former preeminence by dancing to the seductive and well-financed tune played by the very forces that have created our current dynamic.  And as Albert Einstein so aptly said, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

- Bob Ferris 

Executive Director 

P.S. 

For more information regarding the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal please refer to our website www.re-sources.org.

Recap of Custom Plywood Cleanup Public Forum

In Anacortes, on Thursday, March 10, 2011, 21 citizens gathered for the public forum “Contamination and Custom Plywood,” hosted by RE Sources' North Sound Baykeeper team and Evergreen Islands.

The forum topics include a brief overview of Ecology’s preferred upland and aquatic cleanups and alternatives, as well as in-depth discussions of the dioxin cleanup level at the site, and its health implications for subsistence fishers and how the shoreline at the site would be protected.

Citizens actively participated in some of the brain-teasers that Ecology and the larger community need to wrestle with. Should dioxin in eelgrass be dredged or thin layer capped?  The former serves to obliterate valuable habitat and the latter merely dilutes the contamination.  And how do we know what level of dioxin is safe in sediments?

Citizens walked away with an expanded understanding of the cleanup and with more tools to thoughtfully comment on the cleanup process. Want more information on this cleanup project? Go to RE Sources' website:  http://www.re-sources.org/programs/fidalgo.

Comments period ends Thursday, March 17th, 2011.

Making Urban Spaces Green

Introducing RE Sources' New Community Garden and Educational Series

With the help of Homestead Habitats and BUGS, RE Sources is taking a step toward greening our city spaces. The unused grassy areas behind The RE Store will now be a food producing, educational hub. The new three-part community garden will consist of a rain garden, a native plant forest garden, and a veggie patch. And best of all, we're looking for caretakers to take ownership of small plots of land to call their very own.

We will walk you through the steps in starting a food production garden through our Sustainable Garden Series this Spring (March - April, 2011). Through these six affordable classes, learn the fundamentals in the classroom, then we'll do it hands on with you. If you choose to be a caretaker of RE Sources' community garden, you may choose to take the classes at a discounted rate, while reaping all the benefits of producing your own food. If you’re interested in committing to maintain and harvest a wee plot of heaven, contact HannahC@re-sources.org, 733.8307.

Learn how to make your world more sustainable from the ground up through our series of garden-based classes and workshops. The six-part series will cover a variety of sustainable gardening techniques and put those skills to practice with hands-on workshops in RE Sources’ on-site community garden. Learn how to filter and drain your water systems responsibly through the construction of a beautiful rain garden. Or learn how to design a forest garden that works with nature, growing edible plants native to your climate in a naturally supportive ecosystem. Understand the components of permaculture and learn how to design holistically in your unique garden space. Our Sustainable Garden Series will give you the tools and knowledge to make your (or our) unused space produce life! Enroll in individual classes, or save big when you enroll in the six-week series for just $150! Email HannahC@re-sources.org or call 733.8307 to register.

Class space is limited, so don’t wait! RE Sources' workshops will be taught by Homestead Habitats and the Bellingham Urban Garden Syndicate (BUGS).