Articles by Rebecca

These cooking events are collaboration between Seedleaf and Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church. Tuesday, August 17th will be the next installment of the Soup’s On Events hosted at their normal time on the Third Tuesday of the month.

These events provide an opportunity for folks to learn to prepare a fresh, seasonal recipe for soup using fresh Kentucky produce, much of which is grown within the urban core of Lexington at Seedleaf partner gardens. Each participant will go home with a quart jar of the day’s fixings. Plus, as an added bonus, Maxwell Street Presbyterian, which offers a free soup meal to those in need, will then utilize the surplus soup.

Please plan to join us for this monthly event and discover new flavors and seasonal delicacies!

This month brings bounty in numerous crops, so to celebrate, we’ll be making a soup surprise depending on what’s harvested that day made with all sorts of fresh veggies. If you garden at home, feel free to bring surplus as well, since anything and everything will make this soup better!

When: Tuesday, August 17th from 6 – 7:30pm

Where: Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church (180 East Maxwell Street)

Menu for August: Soup Surprise featuring InFeed grown veggies, along with those from many other gardens! And we’re hoping for a special celebrity chef to add an international flair!

What to Bring: We’re asking for a $5 minimum donation to help cover the cost of the ingredients. Please also plan to bring a quart sized container to bring home the day’s splendor, along with your family and friends!

Please note, in order to have an accurate count of ingredients to buy, please RSVP to rebecca@seedleaf.org

The folks at Faith Feeds have been working overtime this past week by gleaning at Reeds Valley Orchard, where this has been a bumper crop year for fruit, particularly peaches. Well, their excess will become OUR riches!

While there’s nothing like a taste of a fresh, ripe peach, there’s just too many to eat before they spoil.

So right before school starts, let’s help can and freeze as many as these beauties as possible, so that they’ll still be around to enjoy come winter.

Time’s ticking so we’re going to try and pull this off TOMORROW, Tuesday, August 10th.

We’ll once again meet at The Rock/ La Roca UMC at 1015 North Limestone Street. We’ll start at 1pm and will likely go until about 4pm. Kid’s are welcome too!

A beauty - made with cedar no less!

This post is embarrassingly overdue, but we’ll stick with the old adage “better late than never.”

Last summer, it became apparent that we needed to get some sort of a sign at the London Ferrell Community Garden to not only explain the space to curious passerbies but also to communicate with the individual gardeners. It was with great happiness that we stumbled upon the elegant kiosk at the Woodland Community Garden, and we were even happier to discover that the maker was none other than a neighbor.

With very little arm twisting, Greg was kind enough to offer to make a similar one for the London Ferrell Community Garden. And he didn’t take a dime for all his hard work!

Never mind that Greg was anxious to put up the sign back in winter where he had to remove his gloves to mix the concrete to stabilize it. And never mind that it took us months to properly fill it with necessary information, all carefully tucked behind plexiglass front to shield it from the elements.

Despite our horrendous negligence, we still wanted to take an opportunity to thank Greg for his kindness and craftsmanship. Next time you’re at the garden, take a moment to appreciate the lovely, handmade kiosk! And don’t forget to check out the information posted on it too!

About a month ago we announced a new project in Lexington. In partnership with the Bluegrass Community Foundation and Cricket Press, we’ve been distributing snazzy Food Grown Here signs to interested growers all around Lexington. Not only have they been enormously popular, but they’ve been popping up all over the place. Where you ask? Well just look!

But we’ve got more! So if you want to join in this advocacy effort to showcase all the food grown around town, contact us today.

We’re also extremely proud that the donations for the signs ($10 per sign) have been a great fundraiser for the East End Renaissance Fund to help beautify and revitalize this significant part of town.

So if your growing food (and we mean ANY food), contact us today to show your pride!

Sometimes you find that you work on things for so long that you vow to never calculate your time to outcome ratio. But then there are those breakthroughs where you wonder how you’re so fortunate to be along for the ride.

Over the past many months a host of key players including Community Ventures Corporation, Bluegrass Community Foundation, William Wells Brown Community Center and Neighborhood Associations, along with Seedleaf, have been engaged in an effort to address food security in the East End of Lexington using more innovative solutions.

One key piece of the strategy has been to develop a community market with farmers market fresh local produce at the pavilion at the intersection of E. Third St. and Midland.

We are ecstatic to announce that this market will have it’s official kickoff on Saturday, August 7^th, from 8am – noon.

Furthermore, also working in conjunction with CVC, we’re extremely close to being able to build not one but two new gardens downtown. We’re hopeful that these gardens will not only provide more space for interested gardeners, but also serve as a training ground for entrepreneurs in the area to begin to realize the viability of urban gardening and food processing as a business. Stay tuned for more details on the garden builds, which we hope to undertake in time for a fall garden planting.

And please mark your calendars on August 7^th and plan to be among the first to support the East End Community Market!

Big Developments