Life at PFTP continues to exceed expectations in all the good ways. The tree care launch was very successful and with a month of consultations in the books, the care itself is beginning to get scheduled. We’ve also sold out 100% of our winter pruning workshops and are offering the first online workshop focused on soil ecology (sliding scale tickets!). 

Community Building:

We are playing with making Slack a central communication hub - not just for board/leadership, but for our full community. Madeleine is helping coordinate, but we’re envisioning migrating Share in the Harvest off Facebook (for good ethical reasons and practicality/branding), the volunteer group, creating a recipe sharing space, etc. I’d love your thoughts.

February we’re hosting TWO Virtual Happy hours! We held on on 2/11 all about Mason Bees and 2/18 we’re hosting Happiness Family Farm, Feed the Mass, and Equitable Giving Circle to celebrate Black History Month! Please consider attending!

Mobile/Moveable Orchard/Voyaging Gardens Launch Update!

1. Common theme is we need a final permanent name - creatives unite! 

2. Unit 1 is almost done - Veggies will live at the Orchards in a sunny courtyard, Tree will live on Alberta (!!!)

3. Unit 2 is in it’s planning phase! Stay tuned!

4. Nicole is working with our Rose CDC folk to get a survey out to residents. We are needing it in SEVEN languages, so if you know anyone that writes in: Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Swahili, Spanish or Russian, let me know. Otherwise, I’m investigating a small grant to cover IRCO doing the translation. This will get us to what to plant and hopefully garner interest in helping going forward.

Interns continue to find us and are tackling a ton of projects including:

• Planning community meetings to determine planting hopes for the moveable orchard container going to the Orchards 

• Planning community meetings to identify barriers to using fruit at different scales as well as barriers to participation in harvests/PFTP activities

• Planning and implementing promotions and ads for Tree Care

• Building the moveable orchard boxes (starting box 2!)

• PR rollout for moveable orchards!

• Grant research (including seeking grant funding to pay for some of the intern program costs and providing stipends)

• Food equity focused social media posts - presented from strength based perspectives (e.g. for Black History Month talking about contributions to farming by Black folx historically but also highlighting groups operating now)

• Researching what advocacy can look like for PFTP (thanks to Kris for offering her knowledge on developing a program like this and to the board members who have met with Quinna)

• And of course all of Madeleine’s work to make the Virtual Happy Hours successful - she is also working with Kenja (Food equity social media) to tie together those two projects

This is just a sample of all we’re up to, but we hope it’s interesting! Want other information you’re not seeing? Comment here!